Jan-Feb, Mar-Apr, May-Jun 1965 - Navy League of Australia

"" ' '134,000 MILES UNDER THE SEABy John L. YoungMerchant ships sail the sevenseas from port to port, unloadingtheir cargoes of 'ivory and apesand peacocks' by the dockside:but the cable ships—and this isone of their differences fromother vessels—drop their cargo'to the bottom of the sea as theysteam ahead. The 'cargo' whichis telegraph or telephone cable,passes over the stern sheavesabout eight miles astern whenlaying in 2.CXX) or more fathomsbefore it begins to creep alongwhat Kipling called the 'greatgrey level plains of ooze'. Butif the poet's licence about theeven flatness of the 'utter dark'was accurate in fact, a cableship's task would be much simplerthan it so often is.Great Britain, under theCommonwealth TelecommunicationsBoard which maintains anddevelops the external telecommunicationsnetwork of man>partner governments, has a fleetof eleven cable ships. The BritishPost Office operates Her Majesty'sTeleuraph Ships MON­ARCH. ALERT, IRIS andARIEL, while the nationalisedcompany. Cable and WirelessLtd.. has a fleet of eight cableships—and another on the stocks—consisting of CS. MERCl'RY.STANLEY ANGWIN. ED­WARD WILSHAW. RETRIE­VER. RECORDER. MIRROR.NORSEMAN and LADY DEN-ISON-PENDER MONARCH.ALERT and CS. MERCL'RYare cable lasers. The others arcprimarily cable repair ships,though also capable of laving:indeed, during the war CS. RE­CORDER picked up 600 milesof cable between Aden andBombay and relaid it to providea route between Aden and Muscat,completing the job in threetrips—just before the monsoonbroke.Originally. Her Majesty'sTelegraph Ships were built tolay and maintain telegraph andlater telephone cables under theEnglish Channel and North Sea.though today MONARCH andALERT travel regularly farafield. MONARCH has workedbetween stations as far west asHonululu and as far east asSingapore and north and southIrom Greenland to Ururguav.ALERT has recenlK laid telephonecable between Jamaica,Florida and Panama.The task of the Cable andWireless repair ships is to maintainthe 134.(XTO nautical milesof submarine telegraph cable*which have progressively girdledthe earth since Falmouth. Gibraltarand Malta were firstconnected in 1S68. Today theJOIN THE NAVY LEAGUEThe object of the Navy League in Australia, likeits older counterpart, the Navy League in Britain,la to Insist by all means at its disposal upon thevital importance of Sea Power to the British Com-Bsonwealth of Nations. The League sponsors theAustralian Sea Cadet Corps by giving technical seaThe League consists or Fellows (Annual or Life) and Associates.All British subjects who signify approval to the objects of the League are eligible.training to and instilling naval training in boys whointend to serve In Naval or Merchant services andalso to those sea-minded boys who do not intendto follow a sea career, but who, given this knowledgewill form a valuable Reserve for the Naval Service.MAY WE ASK YOU TO JOIN and swell our members so that the Navy League in Australia may be widelyknown and exercise an important influence in the life of the Australian Nation?For particulars, contact The Secretary, 66 Clarence Street. Sydney, NSWor The Secretary, Room 8, 8th Floor, 528 Collins Street, Melbourne, CI, Victoria.or one of the Hon. Secretaries at:• Box 376E, G.P.O., Brisbane, Queensland• 11 Quorn Street, Sandy Bay, Hobart, Tasmania• CI- II.M.A.S. -Melville", Darwin, N.T.• 3* Plrie Street, Adelaide, S.A.0 182 Coode Street, Como, W.A.• 6* Limestone Ave., Ainslie, Canberra,. A.C.T.22 THE NAVYcompany's submarine telegraphnetwork runs from Porthcurnoin Cornwall, under the Bay ofBiscay and through the Mediterranean,Suez Canal and RedSea to Aden, where cables crossthe Indian Ocean to Bombay andColombo; across the Atlantic toCanada and Latin America;down the west coast of Africato the Cape and up the eastcoast to Mombasa and Aden;across the Indian Ocean to CocosIsland, whence one branchturns southward to Australia andanother eastward through Malawito Hongkong; from Bamfield,on the far west coast of Canada,a cable crosses the Pacific toFiji. New Zealand and Australia.Although the Empire has becomethe Commonwealth, andalthough the network reaches toforeign as well as to Commonwealthcountries, messages runningthrough it arc still routed'via Imperial".Since 1956, when the firsttransatlantic telephone cablewas laid jointly by Britain, theUnited States and Canada, ninetyyears after Britain and NorthAmerica were first successfullyconnected by telegraph cable, theCommonwealth TelecommunicationsBoard has been planningand Cable and Wireless, assistedby chartered Post Office ships,has been laying the first links inthe Commonwealth comprehensivecable system designed toprovide ultimately some 30,000nautical miles of submarine telephonelinks between many Commonwealthcountries. The firstiink in the chain, CANTAT, betweenScotland and Canada, isalready carrying calls; the second,COMPAC, connecting Canadawith Australia, is now beinglaid and should be completed bythe end of this year; while thethird, SEACOM. linking Australiawith the Federation ofMalaya, Singapore, North _ Borneoand Hong Kong, should beMARCH-APRIL, 1965completed by 1966. Cable andWireless are financing the systemjointly with the variousCommonwealth governmentsconcerned, the terminals beingcontrolled by the respectivecountries. The total ultimate costis estimated at about £88 million.The latest available returnsshow that in 1961-62 the Commonwealthcable and wirelesssystem carried between Commonwealthand foreign countriesmore than 784 i million wordsof telegraph traffic, nearly 29 imillion minutes of telephonecalls and almost 141 millionminutes of telexed messages. Thecable networks play a great partin carrying this traffic.The job of the cable ships,apart from laying new routes, isto maintain and, when necessary,repair the cables to ensure thatthe signals, which travel a littleless fast than light (168,000miles a second) get throughwithout interruption. A cableship laying cable may (like CS.MERCURY for example) carryon one trip up to 99,000 squareinches of cable, or 1,200 milesof the latest lightweight type designedby the Post Office andsheathed in polythene. The cableis drawn aboard across theThames at Greenwich directfrom the manufacturers, andcoiled below in huge tanks;HMTS MONARCH, for example,has four tanks each 41 feetin diameter. When laying a submarinetelephone cable, a shipmust also carry up to forty-eightof the huge repeaters which haveto be spliced-in on board intothe cable about every 30 milesto strengthen the signals as theypass, otherwise those signalswould be so attenuated that thecalls would be inaudible at thedistant end. Submerged repeaterhousings, which are the outershell of the repeaters, have beendeveloped by Vickers and StandardTelephones & Cables Ltd.,over the past nine years andused on many of the undersealines laid to date.A cable ship, since she dropsher 'cargo' into the sea as shesteams along, must be well ballasted.When HMTS MONARCHwas recently remodelled (in theVickers yard at Hebburn) forwork on COMPAC, the additionaltopweight of her equipmenthad to be compensated forby distributing 519 tons of pigiron in her double-bottom tanks:although this reduced her carryingweight by 667 tons it was noembarrassment for, with the newlightweight cable, a ship's capacityis governed by volume ratherthan weight.Essential equipment in a sableship includes echo- and depthsounders.The seabed may be no'great grey level plain'; thesounders which report the characterof the depths where there'is no sound, no echo of sound',will reveal humps and hollows.When a ship is laying cable shemay have to lay extra lengthshere and there to prevent unduesuspension and chafing by rocksover the valleys.Setting out with her load onthe previously charted course, aship draws the cable from hertanks below and passes it intothe sea over special laying-outmachinery at stern. She also hasbow-sheaves for grappling andrepair.The cable must run at an exactdegree of tautness to ensureeven laying without breaks andas it is drawn along deck it passesthrough an electrical dynamometerwhich registers the strainto an exact degree.An outstanding feature ofcable work at sea is that, whateverthe circumstances, a shipmust if possible, continue hercourse. HMTS MONARCH,laying the first transatlantic telephonecable, had to make a sudtt