49 More Days Before We Open a New Chapter in the Island’s History Vince Thompson - Tammy Williams Tuesday 20th August is scheduled to be the day when St Helena has a cable ship in Rupert’s Bay with 50 crew on board. They will be ready to bring ashore the connection to the Equiano Cable. More people will be on the beach ready to guide the cable to its final destination, the cable landing station.

Work on getting the cable ashore starts much earlier. At the end of July between 12 and 14 engineers and divers are ex- pected to arrive by special charter plane. Their job will be to make sure everything is ready at the cable landing station and will plan the details for landing the cable. Divers will inspect everything between the cable ship and the beach to avoid any last minute problems as the cable comes ashore.

The cable ship, called the Teliri is now moored at Calais docks; Cable Ship Teliri returning to port the cable is being loaded now. The French subsea cable maker, Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), has a massive factory not far from the Port of Calais in the English Channel capable of manufacturing 28,000 miles of cable a year. They have constructed a tunnel linking the cable factory with the docks so the cable can be passed through the tunnel from the factory and loaded on to the ship by winding it onto large spools. As the cable is drawn through the tunnel the cable is checked for defects. If a defect is found, the fault is rectified there and then. The loading procedure can take a long time.

When the loading of the cable is completed the Teliri will to the South Atlantic at normal cruising speed before cable laying starts. The cable connections for Nigerian and other Laying Cable counties on the West African coast will be laid first. More recently announced it will take one of the branching units built into the main Equiano cable to allow connections along the cable route. Once these connections are in place the Teliri will sail a little further south to start laying the St Helena connection. Cable ships are normally limited to a speed of about 8 knots when cable laying at sea is under way.

The Teliri is an Italian ship owned by Telecom Italia but is managed and operated by Orange Marine who are sub-con- tracted by Alcatel Submarine Network to lay the cable. Or- ange Marine is a subsea cable business which has built up a share of the fast expanding subsea cable industry since 2004. Alcatel’s factory at Greenwich, UK Last year Orange Marine was laying cables on seven routes including Mauritius – Reunion – Madagascar and South Af- The repeaters, branching units and other submerged cable rica, from Singapore to the United States and Italy to Albania. equipment start their journey from Alcatel’s Greenwich fac- Orange Marine has installed more than 230,000 kilometres of tory in the UK. The factory was redeveloped about 10 years fibre optic submarine cables and laid cable in every ocean. Its ago but in 1858 the world’s first world’s first transatlantic ca- ships have made over 670 cable repairs, some at 6000 me- ble was manufactured there. Today the site houses modern tres of depth. Orange Marine operates 6 cable ships which production and clean room facilities, assembly and testing represents 15% of the world fleet of cable ships. Included in facilities, as well as project management and marine opera- the Orange Marine group of companies is Chamarel Marine tions teams. Services and SIMEC which designs, manufactures and oper- ates submarine vehicles (ROV, ploughs, trenchers and crawl- A Day to Remember ers) which are used when repairing subsea cables. Equiano Connection Day should 20th August and it will be a day to remember. Jerry Roberts told Saint FM this week that restricted access will be available for people to see the cable

The St Helena Independent Volume XVI, Issue 30, Friday 2nd July 2021 6 49 More Days Before We Open a New Chapter in the Island’s History Vince Thompson - Tammy Williams come ashore. More details on the arrangements for the day will be given as soon as we get them.

The Equiano Cable from Portugal to Cape Town, showing the connection to St Helena. Another connection is shown from the main cable to Nigeria. Seven other branching units are indicated along the length of the Equiano cable; further con- nections to other African countries have been agreed since this map was published.

Also shown is the route of the SAEx cable. The development of plans for this route have taken much longer than first ex- pected but laying further communication cables across the South Atlantic is a distinct possibility. Along with the expan- sion of the cable network is the possibility that St Helena could become the South Atlantic hub, linking subsea cables through earth stations with satellite constellations orbiting the world.

The First Cable to St Helena Atlantic-Cable.com (Excerpt) In late 1899 the Telegraph Construction & Maintenance Com- Anglia returned to the UK for more cable CS Seine laid the pany (Telcon) made and laid this cable from Cape Town to St section from St Helena to Ascension, a distance of 844 nm, Helena for the Eastern Telegraph Company, continuing to completing it by 15 December 1899. CS Anglia then laid 1975 Ascension Island, and in 1900 on to St Vincent, Cape Verde nm of cable from Ascension to St Vincent, Cape Verde Is- Islands. lands, completing the task by 21 February 1900.

The US Government publication, Commercial Relations of the United States with Foreign States during the year 1898, Wash- ington, 1899, had this to say about the prospective cable: ...the Imperial Government has decided upon laying an “all British submarine cable,” with the following connections: Penzance, Cornwall, England, to Gibraltar, 1,200 miles; Gi- braltar to Sierra Leone, 2,400 miles; thence to Ascension, 800 miles; Ascension to St. Helena, 800 miles; St. Helena to Cape Town, 1,800 miles; total distance, England to Cape Colony, 7,000 miles. The Telegraph and Maintenance Com- At the outbreak of the Boer War in 1899 the only way to get a pany’s steamship John Pender has been engaged in making telegraph message from the UK to Cape Town was either via the necessary soundings, having left Cape Town on May 12 the west coast or the east coast of Africa, a slow and tedious and arrived here May 19. After sounding around the island, it journey. A quicker and more direct route was urgently required. left on May 25 for Ascension, Sierra Leone, Gibraltar, and The Eastern Telegraph Company contracted the Telegraph England. Construction and Maintenance Company to manufacture and lay the necessary cables, which were to link Cape Town - St. The connection by cable with the “mother country” will be the Helena - Ascension - St. Vincent (Cape Verde Islands). Mes- greatest boon ever conferred upon St. Helena, for the reason sages were then routed over the Western Telegraph Com- that hundreds of merchant sailing ships from the East, which pany cables, St Vincent - Madeira - Carcavelos, Portugal, under existing arrangements go out of their way to call at the and from there to Porthcurno they again travelled over the Brazils, Cape Verde, and the West Indies for orders, will avail Eastern network. themselves of this station, St. Helena being situated in the heart of the southeast trade winds, and consequently in the CS Anglia laid the 2065 nm first stage from Cape Town to St direct track of ships from and China bound to the conti- Helena, completing it by 26 November 1899, and while CS nents of and America.

The St Helena Independent Volume XVI, Issue 30, Friday 2nd July 2021 7