A SUBMARINE TELEPHONE CABLE WITH SUBMERGED REPEATERS 85 



peatered cable before, during and after laying, and the special equipment 

 needed for this purpose was more than could be contained in the electrician's 

 room usually provided on cable ships. The jointers' store room was accord- 

 ingly taken over and converted into an electrical laboratory, shown in Fig. 

 15. 



The cable, loaded on board the LORD KELVIN, with the deep sea re- 

 peaters spliced in and stowed away in the tanks, arrived off Key West on 

 April 21, 1950. Courses had been laid out for the two cables with the idea of 

 keeping five-mile separation between the two most of the way, and five-mile 

 separation from the nearest of the cables that constitute the rather compli- 

 cated network between Key West and Havana. It is hoped thereby to avoid 

 having the new cables picked up by mistake in connection with the repair of 

 other cables and to avoid confusing the two cables in case either one of them 

 is in need of repairs. 



The stretch of water between Key West and Sand Key Light, a distance 

 of about 8 n.m., is too shallow for the operation of a ship of the size of the 

 LORD KEL\TX so the sections of the two cables in this area had been laid 

 from barges by the Long Lines Department of the American Telephone and 

 and Telegraph Company. At Havana a new landing place had been selected. 

 Experience with existing cables which land in Havana Harbor indicate 

 that considerable deterioration of armor takes place in this locality and there 

 is also the anchor menace. In addition, closeness to an existing carrier fre- 

 quency cable might have given rise to undesirable crosstalk. The new landing 

 place at the foot of B Street in Havana is about three miles from the harbor. 

 Figure 16 shows the landing site as viewed from the cable ship during the 

 laying operation. A view of the interior of the vault on the Havana shore is 

 given in Fig. 17. 



After putting out mark buoys at strategic points and at intervals of about 

 12 n.m. along the course of the cable, the Key West shore end of No. 5 cable 

 was picked up at Sand Key and spliced on to the cable in the tanks. Then 

 32 n.m. of this cable were paid out, and the end buoyed at the point of final 

 splice. The ship then proceeded to Havana, and landed the manhole repeater 

 which was spliced to the underground cable to the office. The ship then 

 floated the end of the cable ashore on barrels with the aid of a line operated 

 by a winch manned by Cuban Telephone Company personnel. As soon as the 

 end reached shore it was spliced to the repeater, the barrels were cut off, the 

 cable dropped to the bottom and the cable on shipboard was paid out until 

 the point of final splice was reached, where the end on board was spliced to 

 the previously buoyed end to complete the connection between Key West 

 and Havana. 



The ship then returned to Havana, landed the end of No. 6 cable by means 



