THE CABLE SHIP ON REPAIRS. 341 



very quick turns and movements can be made, and the 

 experience gained Is that for shallow water and in strong tides 

 there is nothing to beat them. Drawing as she does less than 

 two fathoms of water, this vessel is very useful for repairs 

 close in shore. 



On the outside of the ship, just below the bow baulks, are 

 fixed narrow footboards or platforms, one on each side, which 

 the men engaged in putting stoppers on the cable stand upon 

 while so engaged, being held up under the arms by a bowline. 

 All work is done from the bows, one sheave only being fitted. 

 Steam steering gear is fitted, the wheel-house being on bridge- 

 deck level. A neat part of this gear is the arrangement for 

 setting the limit either way. The engine is bj- this device 

 stopped when it has shifted the rudder by a predetermined 

 amount, and the wear and jar produced in spinning the wheel 

 a little too far, and going hard over, is prevented. 



The chart room is on the same deck, and contains a large 

 store of charts with the routes of the various cables round 

 the British Isles, and positions where repairs or changes of 

 route and splices have been made. One of the most re- 

 markable of these is that showing the course of the London- 

 Paris telephone cable laid by the "Monarch" early in 1891. 

 Met by heavy weather soon after leaving the French coast, she 

 was unable to continue paying out cable in the proper course ; 

 and not wishing to cut it, ran before the storm^ paying all out 

 and buoying the end. When the weather subsided, she picked 

 it up and relaid it, but not in a straight course. 



This cable, which was manufactured by Messrs. Siemens 

 Brothers, under the supervision of the Post Office Engineers, 

 contains four separate conductors, two for each circuit. After 

 stranding the cores the whole is served with tanned hemp, and 

 the outer sheath is of 16 galvanised iron wires, each 0'28in. 

 thick, with a breaking stress of 3,5001bs. The sheathing wires 

 are protected by a coating of gas-tar and silica. The insula- 

 tion of the copper conductors is made up entirely of solid gutta- 

 percha to 3001b. per knot, no Chatterton's compound being 

 used. The shore ends of this cable do not difiier from the main 

 portion — that is, the sheathing is the same throughout, and, 

 indeed, unless the ground is very bad, it is quite unnecessary 

 to increase the size of the sheathing wires for the shore ends of 

 multiple cables. The weight of each conductor is 1601b., and 



