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1858 ENGLAND - HOLLAND SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH CABLE
1858 England-Holland cable, marked:
South Zandvoort
Laid August 1858
Picked up July 1878 |
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The cable was manufactured by Glass, Elliot & Company and laid by them using CS William Cory. Length was 129 nm. and the cable construction was four copper wires No 13 BWG covered with gutta percha to No 0 BWG and ten iron wires No 00 BWG. Two wires were also coated with Chatterton's compound.
The cable was inherited by the GPO when the private telegraph companies were nationalized in 1870, and was then leased to the Submarine Telegraph Company, which worked all of the continental cables.
Mechanics' Magazine, 4 September 1858, p.226:
NEW SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH CABLES.
The Times of Saturday last, in an article elsewhere referred to, gives the following account of new submarine telegraphic cables.
In a short time Mr. Canning, we believe, will have to start with the great cable which is now being made at Glass and Elliot's, and which is to be laid down for the Electric and International Telegraph Company between this country and the Hague. This is the largest and heaviest cable that has ever been yet manufactured, and it is not too much to say that no other makers, besides Glass and Elliot, in the world could produce a wire so massive, and yet so finely and perfectly finished.
Up to the present time the electrical communications between this country and the Hague have been maintained nominally by four light ropes, each containing one copper conductor, and each covered with solid iron wire. We say nominally by four ropes, though really it has rarely been by more than two, as, from the shallowness of the water between Lowestoft and Holland, some one or more were always being injured by vessels' anchors, so that it was constantly necessary to keep a steamer employed to pick them up, mend them, and lay them down again.
To put an end once and for all to these perpetual sources of outlay, the company have determined on the present monster rope, combining the four wires in one and otherwise of such strength and weight that if a vessel is so unfortunate as to catch her anchor in it she will infallibly lose it, as beyond a doubt she can neither raise nor break this cable. It is composed of an inner rope of four separately insulated No. 13 copper wires, each cased in its own gutta percha, and the four twisted, with hemp between the interstices, into a rope. This is bound round by six large strands of greased hemp, and the whole enclosed with 10 iron wires which have no number in the trade, for each in fact is a small iron rod, being no less than 1⅛ inch in circumference. The weight of the whole cable is nearly 10 tons per mile, and its breaking strain is upwards of 100 tons.
The length made is 140 miles; the distance between the points of landing—Dunwich, near Lowestoft, and Zandvoort, about 30 miles from the Hague—is about 98 or 100 miles. Nearly 50 per cent., therefore, is allowed for slack, a large margin considering the immense strength of the cable, and that the vessel may put any strain on it she pleases. The paying-out machines to be used on this occasion are simply double drums of great weight and strength, with friction clutches of equal power to the size and weight of the drums. This machine was used with the first Mediterranean cable, and for the cable laid by Mr. Canning across the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
At Glass and Elliot's works two other cables are also in progress, one for the Submarine Company, abont 300 miles long, between Cromer, in Norfolk, and Emden, in Hanover, and another for the same company to Denmark, near Cruxhaven, a distance of 380 miles. Both these cables will be heavy, as becomes the places they have to work across.
On his Distant Writing website, Steve Roberts gives these details of the 1858 Zandvoort cable:
A new exceptionally heavy underwater cable with four cores was laid by the Electric & International Telegraph Company between September 19 and 21, 1858 from Orfordness to Zandvoort in Holland to replace its original four lightweight circuits, which had suffered repeatedly from ships’ anchors. It was engineered by Latimer Clark and manufactured by Glass, Elliot & Company. The four old cables were then raised to recover the copper cores for scrap and reuse.
This first Zandvoort cable was enveloped in drama and incident, with accusations of industrial sabotage.
In the Guildhall Court in London, on February 20 and 21, 1861, Glass, Elliot, the makers of the 1858 Zandvoort cable, sued George Boswall, London agent of R S Newall, its chief competitor, for damages. Boswall was accused of engaging a man named Curtis to accompany the cable-laying expedition to drive a series of iron nails into the cable to destroy its insulation on submersion.
Curtis admitted his actions to the court, but Boswall’s plot was only partially successful, as just one of the four cores was penetrated. His damage cost the Company something like £4,000 to £5,000 in attempts to repair.
A paper by William Preece, who was to have a long career in the telegraph industry of the 19th century, was presented at a meeting of the Institution of Civil Engineers in London in 1860. In this paper, On the Maintenance and Durability
of Submarine Cables in Shallow Waters, Preece makes several references to the Zandvoort cable:
On the weight of cables:
The new system of laying light cables in shoal water, from which the Channel Islands Company was suffering so grievously, was first adopted by the Electric Company in their lines from Orfordness to the Hague, where, instead of laying one strong and heavy iron cable, four comparatively light cables, each with one conductor only, were laid across the North Sea, on the principle, that the chances were against all the four being broken down at the same time. That system which had also been adopted between Dublin and Holyhead, had been, however, far from satisfactory, the annual cost for repairs having amounted, during several years, to from £10,000 to £12,000, and the Company had been, finally, compelled to lay a heavy cable from Dunwich to Zandvoort, in Holland, the working of which had been very successful.
[Steve Roberts notes that the lightweight cables were advocated by R S Newall, and the Electric Telegraph Company unfortunately, followed his advice. The inshore ends of the Channel Islands company's cables were to a heavy, 6 ton per mile, specification and still failed, as they were laid over a poorly surveyed rocky sea bed. Preece was the surveyor!]
On laying:
With respect to the paying out of cables, he would allude to a circumstance that repeatedly came under his notice. The captains of the vessels so employed, often steered direct from one point to another, being merely desirous of making the quickest passage, without reference to the position in which the cable should be laid. A vessel sailing direct from east to west, and encountering several tides, would deposit the cable in a number of zigzags. Such, for example, was the case between Dunwich and Zandvoort, on the coast of Holland; more cable being used, than was fairly required for the distance. Captains were, generally, so well satisfied with their own practical knowledge, that they often regarded the suggestions of landsmen, as an ignorant interference. But it was important to draw their attention to this fact, for by such steering, they not only wasted the cable, but they rendered it difficult, afterwards, to ascertain its position when repairs were required.
On the finding of cable faults by measurements made from the shore:
Messrs. C.F. Varley and G. Preece, have been equally accurate in the North Sea. On one occasion, Mr. Varley pronounced a defect in the Zandvoort cable of the Electric and International Telegraph Company, to be 61 miles from the English shore, and it proved to be at the exact spot indicated. Mr. G. Preece, in testing on board ship, 13 miles from land, while repairing a break at that spot, found the cable again severed at a distance, according to his tests, of 50 miles towards Holland, and the break was found at 50¼ miles.
Extracts from a letter written by Cromwell F. Varley to the Mechanics' Magazine, 28 November 1862, p.341:
My Dear Sir, —Referring to our conversation this morning upon telegraph cables, I subjoin a few facts that will doubtless interest you.
The manufacture of gutta percha since 1857 has been greatly improved, and its insulating power increased thereby more than ten times.
The Dunwich Zandvoort cable, made in 1858, and 134 statute miles in length, contains four conducting wires of 110 lb. to the statute mile; two of them are insulated with two coatings of gutta percha only. The other two are insulated also with two coatings of gutta percha, but between the wire and the first coat of gutta percha, and between the two layers of that material, there is a film of Chatterton's compound (a mixture ot vegetable tars and gutta percha).
The Lowestoft and Zandvoort cable, made in 1862, contains four conducting wires of similar dimensions to those in the Dunwich cable, but each wire is insulated with three coats of gutta percha, and between each of those coats there is a film of Chatterton's compound.
The wires tested in August last in the following ratio (nearly):—
1858
cable |
2 wires plain gutta percha alone |
1 |
| 2 wires " with compound |
1½ |
1862
cable |
All four |
11 |
The insulation having improved in the ratio of 1 to 11.
The 1858 (Dunwich Zandvoort) cable improved in insulating power considerably after submersion a few months, and although submerged four years, its insulation is now as high as it ever was.
The conducting power of copper has likewise been considerably improved.
The conducting power of the 1862 cable is 25 per cent, greater than the 1858 cable; this improved conducting power increases the speed of the cable in a corresponding ratio.
The appliances for testing cables during manufacture and otherwise have very considerably advanced; and minute leakages, that in 1858 would have escaped notice, are now easily detected.
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