NEWS OF THE WORLD.

Thames Star, Volume LX, Issue 16959, 4 December 1926, Page 3

NEWS OF THE WORLD.

SINGS ACROSS GREEN SILENCES LAYING OF NEW CABLE. j Tn murky green valleys a (black ! liawser unrolls itself. Tt slides among the glistening rock of mountains under | the sea.. It slips along plateaux in a spangle of silver bubbles. It buries it- ' self in eerie pits of ooze. On and on I it moves across the ranges and through j the gorges and over the. plains far j below the flashing expanse of the j Pacific. j It is merely a duplication of our.prej sent Pacific cable. That’s how Mr. ! R. S. Bain, the general superintendent ' of the Pacific Cable Board, puts it. j That’s how he tells a story as gripping l and fascinating as anything that Jules j Verne ever conceived. I When the cable-layer Domiivia steams into harbour at Fanning Island a great part of the Pacific will have been bridg- , ed by a new cable, j But it will be a month before the ; news of the world and the cameos of business diplomacy and romance are 1 crackling their way through those dim undersea valleys on tile section. I “Yes, merely a duplication,” repeats •|Mr. Bean, as he gazes from the window ; of his office down on the traffic whirl of George Street. On a big wall map of th© Pacific his finger pauses at the word Bamfield, which appears in large letters on the coast of British Columbia. You may have never heard of Bamfield. Many of us have not, but in the world of deep sea -cables Bamfield is well known. The little British Columbian port is quite an important spot. It is the North American terminal of the Pacific cable. “You see,” says Mr. Bain, as he slides his finger out into the blue patch on the map, that is the Pacific, “the Dominia is now about there—somewhere there—roughly 2200 miles out on the way to Panning. She is due at Fanning on Sunday.” Behind that casual remark lies a fascinating story. 5000 MILES OF CABLE. The Dominia is the world’s largest ' cable layer. When she puts out from Bamfield she carries the longest cable I in the world—sooo miles of it. It reposed in four great tanks, each holding 50,000 cubic feet of coiled cable. | That cable —the whole 5000 miles of i it — by Sunday night, will have been 1 threaded through the ravines over the foothills and up and down the mountain siebs below the Pacific. In places it will coil like a slimy wet snake about the base of a mighty towers of coral. It will trail across the bed of the deepest valley of the Pacific, a mile below the sapphire plain where the sun glints and dances. It will plunge down through forests .—.weird forests of feathery weeds that cling and undulate endlessly—down into morasses of black mud. Barnacles will grip that swaying rope which, lost in the misty green caverns of an ocean, will connect two great j continents. Next year the price of stocks and the news of the world will * sing -their way through these awful green silences. I From Bamfield to Fanning Island is I 3625 nautical miles, but 5000 miles of cable are being laid to allow for “slack j 8 per cent, of it to climb the submarine mountains and trail through the I submarine valleys. V hen the Dominia. started out from British Columbia about a month back tiie end of the i cable was trenched at the cable station ] at Bamfield. From the first of the big tanks to be opened the cable was

paid out int othe placid waters of tlio little harbour of the North American port. -

VOYAGE OF ROMANCE

The romantic voyage began. Large supplies of oil fuel had been ftaken aboard the cable vessel. Laying a span of cable is, or should be, a nonstop job. A cable steamer cannot wander off to distint lands in the Pacific for more fuel and keep paying out cable behind her. It would lead to endless chaos.

Heavy seas and savage gales sometimes hold up the work. Then the aim of the master of a cable-layer is to stop paying out cable into U>e sea and just heave to and wait till the “dirty” weather passes. Sometimes when the gale becomes particularly fierce, and the strain on the new cable is intense, the cable is cut off astern and a buoy is lashed to the end of it. The steamer then beats about in sight of that buoy till the blow eases, and it is possible to join the two ends of the cable and move oil once more.

Nothing like this happened on the present voyage of the Dominia. She cruised across turquoise seas that never became unruly. From her stern the cable slid steadily in a flurry of foam down to its ocean bed. It was paid out at the rate of 10 miles an hour which i§ an excellent speed at which to lay* a heavy ocean cable. But, then, Mr. Bain, who regards the whole fascinating adventure as the nfost dommonplace affair imaginable will tell you that the ffoor of the Pacific ig quite easy to span with a cable The deepest valley in that ocean is a mile from the shimmering surface to the lowest carpet of ooze. In the Atlantic, he will tell you, there are some awe-inspiring gulches two miles deep 1 Two miles between mighty walls of age-old rocks! Dark, terrifying valleys these which swallow up miles of cable like some unseen monster of mythology lurking in a noisome cave. Then in the Atlantic, too, there are mighty Alpine peaks and tumbled ranges of rocky crags. That slender cable has to wend its way through all this prehistoric riot of topography. In the Pacific, however, the path of the cable-layer is smoother. From the American coast there are sandy plains until somewhere about 700 miles ont the Dominia had to haul her new cable uphill. > This rise was found to be gentle but considerable 1 The Dominia's crew charted it as Britannia Hills—the name given to this range by the crew of the cable vessel that laid the first Pacific cable across its slopes 25 years ago. This was o,ne of the most intriguing parts of the whole job—carrying a cable over a line of mountains brooding unseen far below the heaving green seas. ON TO SUVA.

Until last week two new cables were threading themselves across the floor of the Pacific in the same direction. While the Dominia was paying out her line, like a spider making a web, between Bamfield and Fanning Island, about 2000 miles ahead of her was the Faraday, another cable vessel canying on th© new cable over the section from Fannig Island to Suva—2o43 miles The actual wire of this line of cable that has now bridged a big section of tlio Pacific is little larger than an ordinary telephone wire. It is covered first by a special insulation that prevents breakage or loss of current in transmission. Then there are two rnoie layers of packed and pitched yarn that pi'ake the whole line perhaps two inches thick. . , . Of course Mr. Bain has m his office samples of thicker cables, but these are reinforced for use across rocky sea

floors. Near Norfolk Island, lie says, are the most destructive cable wearing rocks to be found about the Pacific.

Beyond Suva and Fanning Island however, the lighter type or cable suffices because for the most part it rests on or rather in a bed of black mud.

In parts of the Pacific coral polyp's are always likely to build a sort of reinforced concrete wall around and above the cable. If a line goes amiss in these circumstances it cannot be reached. It is necessary to chop it off at both ends of the coral construction and put in a new joining section. Mr. Bain claims that this new cable which will vastly improve the board’s service, will have an indefinite life. “If a German warship had not cut that cable at Fanning Island a Pacific cable would never have been broken. J.n 1923 we took up the end of the pre sent cable .at Bamfield and found that it was just as good as it was 22 years before when it was laid down.” ’QUAKES AND BOCK-SLIDES. Earthquakes and rock x slides, Mr. Bain admits, might conceivably chop a cable, but the Pacific line had been out of range of such disturbances of the sea floor. The New Caledonian cable, however, was often affected by some under-sea disturbance.. But this job is just an ordinary one “merely a duplication of our present cable,” he repeated as he allowed the map of the Pacific to fly back on its roller. “Our transit times will be much inn proved by the duplication. The Dominia reached Fanning Island on November 14, but the contractors had control of the line for testing for a nfonth after that.” The new cable is of he loaded type. The copper core is bound with a metallic alloy of iron and nickel. This will make is possible for telegraphic signals to follow each other over the cable in more rapid succession. The. carrying capacity and working speed of the -new cable will be more than five times that of the first Pacific cable laid in 1902.