May iS, 1882 



NA TURE 



61 



the gutta-percha core and destroyed the insulation of the 

 cable. Means were taken to prevent this trouble, but as 

 passing ships did not leave a sufficient number of tele- 

 grams, the project was abandoned. Nevertheless, it is 

 clear that such a scheme is worthy of further trial ; and 

 even with ordinary lightships it is eminently desirable 

 that they should be in telegraphic communication with 

 the nearest Coast Guard Station. At present, guns and 

 rockets are the only available messengers, and when the 

 wind is off the shore, guns are sometimes not heard ; or 

 when the weather is thick, rockets are not seen. The 

 result is, that ships are sometimes lost on shoals close by 

 the lightships, without the Lifeboat Station knowing it. 

 Carrrer-pigeoi s have btm tried, but these birds fail to 

 make good progress in snow-storms or thick weather, and 

 in heavy gales are driven hither and thither at the mercy 

 of the elements. The plan for cable communication 

 adopted by the Telegrap . Construction and Maintenance 

 Company is to moor the lightships by chains to two 

 mushroom anchors sunk a considerable distance apart. 

 ' ne of these chains is made double, and the cable runs 

 through the middle of it between the double links, as 

 shown in Fig. I. The chains meet at a mooring swivel, 

 which is made so as to allow the cable to pass through it, 

 as shown in Fig. 2. Between the swivel and the bow 

 sheave of the ship, a revolving joint in the cable/designed 

 by Mr. Lucas, prevents the cable becoming twisted as 

 the ship swings to the wind and tides. A sufficient length 

 of cable is coiled in a tank on board, for paying out, 

 when from stress of weather it is necessary to employ 

 more chain. A pretty model of a lightship moored on 

 this plan is exhibited by the Company, and on touching 

 a press-button let into the edge of the tank, an electric 

 current is sent through the communicating cable, and 

 strikes a bell on boird the ship. It is satisfactory to 

 know that the Trinity House have agreed to test the plan 

 by means of a cable between the Sunk lightship moored 

 some eight miles off the Essex coast, and the Post Office 

 of Walton-on-the-Naze, from whence telegrams can be 

 sent by day or night for any assistance required. 



Of the total 97,200 miles of cable in the world, some 

 36,420 are owned and worked by the Eastern Telegraph 

 Company and its affiliated companies the Eastern Exten- 

 sion Telegraph Company and the South African Tele- 

 graph Company. The Eastern Telegraph Company is 

 perhaps the most enterprising of cable corporations, and 

 makes a very fine display at the Crystal Palace. Cable 

 operations have been of great assistance to the geo- 

 grapher, and the soundings taken in order to ascertain 

 the nature of the sea-bottom, where a cable route is 

 projected, have enriched our charts quite as much as 

 special voyages. There is, however, another way in which 

 these operations could be made subservient to the cause 

 of natural science; but it is a way which has not been 

 sufficiently taken advantage of. Besides the specimens 

 of stones, mud, and sand, which the sounding-lead brings 

 up from the deep, the cable itself, when hauled up for 

 repairs, after a period of submergence, is frequently 

 swarming with the live inhabitants of the sea-floor — 

 crabs, corals, snakes, molluscs, and fifty other species — as 

 well as overgrown with the weeds and mosses of the 

 bottom. Some attempt was made to describe these 

 captures of the wire, as taken from the tepid seas of the 

 Amazon mouth, by the writer in our pages several years 

 ago (vol. xi. p. 329), 1 and the suggestion was there made 

 that cable repairing might serve as a novel method of 

 dredging; but the hint has probably not been taken, for 

 we cannot learn of any competent naturalist having taken 

 his passage on board a cable-repairing ship, say in the 

 Brazilian and West Indian waters, or better still, the East 

 Indian waters traversed, by the lines of the Eastern and 

 Eastern Extension Telegraph Company, from Aden to 

 Bombay, and from Madras to Penang, Singapore, Ba- 



tavia, and soon to Port Darwin, in Australia. The result 

 is that cables have again and again been lifted richly ves- 

 tured with the spoils of the bottom, and many an unknown 

 species has passed over the drums unnoted, to rot and 

 fester in the general mess within the cable tanks. We 

 venture to predict a rare harvest to the first naturalist who 

 will accompany a repairing ship, and provide himself 

 with means to bottle up the specimens which cling to the 

 cable as it is pulled up from the sea. 



Some idea of these trophies may be gathered from the 

 stall of the Eastern Telegraph Company, where a few of 

 them are preserved. Two of these are a very fine grey 

 sea-snake, caught on the Saigon cable in a depth of thirty 

 fathoms, and a black and white brindled snake, taken 

 trom the Bitavian cable in twenty-five fathoms. Twist- 

 ing round ropes seems to be a habit of this creature, for 

 the writer remembers seeing one scale up a ship's side 

 out in the River Amazon, by the "painter" hanging in 

 the water. 



A good example of a feather-star is also shown ; these 

 animals, being frequently found grasping the cable by their 



1 On some South Air.t 



t"(J. Munro). 



tentacles. A handsome specimen of the blanket sponge, 

 picked up in the Bay of Biscay, is also exhibited ; but 

 the most interesting object of all is a short piece of cable 

 so beautifully encrusted with shells, serpula?, and corals, 

 as to be quite invisible. It was picked up and cut out in 

 this condition from one of the Singapore cables. The 

 rapid growth of these corals is surprising, and some 

 valuable information on this head might be gained tl the 

 electricians of repairing ships in these eastern waters 

 would only make some simple observations. Curiously 

 enough, so long as the outermost layer of oakum and tar 

 keeps entire, very few shells collect upon the cable, but 

 when the iron wires are laid bare, the incrustation speedily 

 begins, perhaps because a better foothold is afforded. 



A deadly enemy to the cable, in the shape of a large 

 boring worm, exists in these Indian seas ; and several of 

 them are shown by the Company. The worm is flesh- 

 coloured and slender, of a length from ii inches to 25 

 inches. The head is provided with two cutting tools, of a 

 curving shape, and it speedily eats its way through the 

 hemp of the sheathing, to the gutta-percha of the core, 

 into which it bores a hole similar to that shown in Fig. 3. 



