THE LAYING OF SUBMARINE CABLES. 171 



ward ends buoyed, she returned to Woolwich to take on board 

 the remaining 1,650 miles of deep-sea cable, then proceeded 

 out again to complete the laying. 



Cable House and Landline. — The cable house is a small 

 building of wood or wood and corrugated iron, erected for the 

 purpose of housing the cable and landline ends, and for afford- 

 ing room under shelter for carrying out tests on the lines from 

 time to time as required. The house, or hut as it is sometimes 

 called, consists in some cases of one room only, provided with 

 test table, galvanometer block and terminal board. In others 

 (depending on the number of cables and lines brought in and 

 distance from town) the house is somewhat larger and contains 

 an additional room, in which a bed or two cin be rigged up 

 when the staflf are required to stay there for a period of several 

 days. 



The ends of the cables landed are in most cases brought up 

 the beach in a trench into the cable house, the outer sheathing 

 being stripped if double-sheathed. Where the beach is not 

 very steep the trench can be made deep enough for the cable to 

 lie in ground kept moist by the sea. But this is not always 

 practicable, and if sand exists for a considerable depth the cable 

 is not altogether excluded from air and is liable to get dry, 

 under which conditions the insulation in time cracks and 

 deteriorates. Where solid earth is not reached it is best to fill 

 in the trench with clay or loam obtained elsewhere and ram it 

 down well around the cable. The pipe system presently to be 

 described has been found to keep the beach leads good for a 

 considerable time, but there is an advantage in having the 

 actual end of the cable within the cable house when testing has 

 to be done. 



The pipe system was introduced by Messrs. Clark Forde & 

 Taylor, and first employed by the Eastern and Associated Tele- 

 graph Companies. In this system the cables are brought in to 

 a cast-iron junction box fixed at low-water mark. This box 

 (Fig. 85) has a rubber gasket under the lid and gland boxes for 

 the cables. The ends of the cables are passed through the 

 glands into the interior of the box and the sheathing wires 

 opened out and bent back over the bosses inside, which hold the 

 cables in position, and take all strain ofi'the joints. The glands 



