Words Under Water : 321 



could be counted upon to remain in useful operation. This is far 

 from being the case. The history of cable is full of accidents and 

 mysteries. Some of the accidents are due to fairly obvious and well- 

 known causes, other interruptions of service have been difficult to 

 explain and some remain in the realm of mysteries. 



Naturally the difficulty of laying a cable increases with the depth 

 of the ocean, but once a cable is down the depth at which it lies 

 seems to have little bearing on its length of life. The greatest hazards 

 to cables occur in shallow water in the continental shelf and at the 

 points where they reach the shore. Here they are subjected to the 

 effects of tide and of ocean currents, to the wear and tear of storms, 

 to damage from the anchors of ships inadvertently dropped in the 

 wrong places. 



Over many years, also, commercial fishermen have added to the 

 worries of cable company executives. The nets and lines and anchors 

 and other gear of fishermen have often been tangled up in the cables. 

 A particular hazard have been the trowel nets dragged over the bot- 

 tom in shallow waters such as the beam net and the net controlled by 

 otter-boards. 



Otter-boards are huge wooden planes weighted with heavy metal 

 and metal bound. They are so heavily constructed that they can be 

 towed over the ocean's floor by a steamer with no damage to them- 

 selves. They are attached to the towing line and to the edge of a net 

 at an angle so that when the towing commences they do not fall in 

 a straight line but tend to ride off at a sharp angle to either side of 

 the center line of the vessel. 



In this respect they resemble a sort of underwater kite, operating 

 sideways. Their tendency to sheer of! sideways is used to keep open 

 the mouth of a great net which also is being dragged over the bot- 

 tom of the ocean to capture sole, halibut, plaice and other flat fishes 

 that like to lie on the bottom of banks and shallow waterways Hke 

 the English Channel. 



While this whole apparatus is very skillfully designed to catch fish, 

 it is equally well adapted to getting tangled in marine cables to the 

 annoyance and cost both of the fishermen and of the cable compa- 

 nies. The resulting irritations and arguments have been resounding 

 and long-continued. 



Some years ago the cable companies put their inventive heads to- 

 gether to solve this expensive dilemma. The result was the extraor- 

 dinary and imexpected invention, the submarine plow. It should have 

 another name for the term "submarine plow" is neither descriptive 



