Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1889-10-12
MENDING OCEAN CABLES.


New York Letter in the Globe Democrat
The Gould or Western Union cables extending
from Ireland to Nova Scotia are both broken.
They have parted somewhere in the depths of
midocean, and some time next month what Is
known as a cable steamer will steam out to the
location on the surface of the mighty deep.
somewhere beneath which the rupture has oc-
CURED, will haul up the broken ends, splice the
the four ends into two cables once more aud
electrical communication between the two coun-
tries over these lines will be restored. Then
the cable steamer will leave the spot unmarke ed
in all that vast area Of water save by reference
to the stars above and to the sun, and will sail
back to the port where she belongs. These two
Gould cables, it may be explained, are two of
the seven cables comprising what is known as
the cable pool. or the remaining five, four are
owned by the Anglo-American company, whose
headquarters and whose offices are in England,
and the fifth cable is the direct cable also owned
by Englishmen. These seven cables. the prop
erty of three companies. pool their earnings
under a contract which has been in existence
for several years. and divide them according to
certain percentages which were fixed at the
time Of the contract. When one or even two of
the cables break, as Is the case at present the
other cables in the pool do the extra work thus
entailed on them. and the gross earnings are
divided up Just the same as though nothing had
do all the cable business done at present, the
cable messages suffer no delay, and the only
thing the company has to do whose cable or
cables are broken is to make the repairs within
a year, because If they are DELAYED beyond that
time the existing contract would be abrogated.
The location of a cable break is very accu-
rately determined by process known to cleo
tricans. and by an instrument which discloses
how far an electrical current started on a given
line of wire travels before it meets with inter-
ruptiOn. The calculation of the distance to the
break made on this side OF the Atlantic can DE
checked and confirmed by similar calculation
made on the other side, although such a con-
firmation is scarcely necessary. After having
found out how far from land the break is the
only other thing the captain or navigator of the
cable steamer wants to know is in what direc-
ton that distance is to be travelled. aud as the
course of the cable is perfectly well known, from
the fact that when the cable was laid accurate
observations were taken by the cable la yers and
records made, the cable steamer starting out to
do the work can steam directly over the spot
where the break is located.
OF course many times it is not possible to de-
termine exactly what the cause OF a cable break
has been, but usually the trouble is that the
cable has been laid too taut and it has broken
or been damaged in q serious way by reason of
the immense strain resulting on this excessive
tautness. The consequence is that whenever
a repair Is made in mdOcean the reparers cut
away all the twisted and strained cable in the
immediate neighborhoed of the break and do
away with all possibility of tautness by putting
in twenty five to fifty miles of new cable. This
NAV meander down the side of a submerged
Mount Washington or may curl quietly up in the
basin of Mohawk valley, but whatever it does
there is no chance of the cable breaking in that
particular spot again from being drawn too
tight.