298 SUBMARINE CABLE LAYING AND KEPAIRING. 



handed screw, operated by a hand wheel, conveniently fixed on 

 the spar deck. As previously described, Messrs. Johnson & 

 Phillips now fit a worm gear between the handle and the 

 operating rod by rneans of which a finer adjustment can be made 

 and a greater holding power effected. The brake wheel is kept 

 cool by revolving in a tank of water, and jets are arranged to 

 play on the face of the wheel between the blocks on the upper 

 half of the ring, the water service being supplied from a small 

 steam pump. 



In the earliest brake appliances Mr. R. S. Newall, of the 

 Sunderland firm of that name, took a prominent part. His 

 experience in the manufacture of wire rope and in the use of 

 winding engines in collieries in the North was used to great 

 advantage. His firm having sheathed and laid the three cables 

 to Ireland and that to Belgium, he was prepared with a very 

 practical form of paying-out brake for the " Monarch '' on the 

 Hague expedition. This was a drum and brake in one, mounted 

 between bearings on a horizontal shaft exactly similar to the 

 drum and brake in the picking-up machine in Fig. 145, though, 

 of course, without the spur gearing. The iron brake strap 

 bore directly on the face of the wheel, one end being fixed and 

 the other set up by hand pressure on a lever, similar to that 

 shown in the picking-up machine in Fig. 144. This was the 

 best thing of its kind up to that time, and the modern brake 

 only differs from it in a better grip by wood blocks and in 

 means for mechanically setting it up by weights or a right and 

 left-handed screw, making an easier adjustment by hand in 

 place of entire manual effort. The brakesman of to-day has an 

 easy job compared with his predecessor of 40 years ago, as the 

 brake is now set to about the strain necessary for a given 

 percentage of slack, and he has only to ease the wheel one way 

 or the other as the stern rises or sinks in pitching. 



In some of the earliest cable-laying expeditions accidents due 

 to insufficient brake-power, or insufficient number of turns of 

 cable round drum, have occurred. If the grip of the cable on 

 the drum is not sufficient, it will continue to pay out, even 

 though the drum is pulled up dead by the brake. Mr. J. W. 

 Brett relates an accident of this kind while laying the 1855 and 

 1856 Mediterranean cables between Spezzia, Corsica, Sardinia, 

 and Bona, when two miles of cable ran out of the ship in five 



