Yesterday morning found the sea wonderfully quietened, with a light northerly breeze blowing. At 6 o’clock the Tutanekai put the Lyall Bay end of the cable over and the ship’s launch and a surf boat snaked it shoreward. As the cable was paid out over the bow sheave barrels were lashed to it to keep it from sinking to the bottom. When the surf was reached the work of getting the cable through the broken water was heavy pulling, but the boatmen are expert at this sort of thing and the cable was brought to the shore, where a staff of telegraph men were waiting. The end was then opened up for connection to instruments temporarily installed in a shed there for the purpose of noting the conditions in the cable.
At 8.30 the ship heaved up her anchor and began the 30-mile journey to the other side of the strait. The cable passed from the hold in which it had been carefuly stowed, around the drum of a rotometer, which measured the length, then through another instrument which recorded the tensile strain exerted by the length depending from the ship, and finally over a large sheave at the forecastle head, whence it trailed away into the sea. The officers on the bridge took frequent observations of various landmarks so that the ship’s course could be plotted exactly on the chart and the line followed by the cable permanently recorded.
The ship end of the cable was connected up with a telephone and speech could be held with the Lyall Bay watchers. In both volume and clearness of sound, despite the necessarily makeshift nature of the connections, the words came wonderfully well over the cable.
About 5 o’clock, the ship having come almost exactly to the desired spot, the buoy marking the end of the southern shore cable was picked up and hauled aboard. Two experts were put ashore to co-operate with the ship’s staff in making final tests and as the weather held fine, it was decided to go straight ahead with the work of joining up the main cable, of which a portion remained in the ship’s hold. This was cut and armoured, and protective coverings of actual telephone conductors in the
centre were laid back for some distance. Exhaustive tests of these conductors, which comprised four small copper wires about No13 standard gauge in size, followed to see that everything was in thorough order and the work of splicing began. It was a delicate task, which continued throughout the night and early morning. The outer coverings were then replaced and strongly reinforced by additional heavy iron wire armour. That done, the cable was dropped overboard, and the ship returned to Wellington.
The shore connections are not yet complete, but it is expected that by next week two of the conductors will be in a position to maintain telephonic communication between WelIngton, Blenheim, and Nelson. Later on all the North and South Island telephone stations will enjoy this advantage.
ODT, 27.3.1926
