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16 November 1896.

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Sir Saul Samuel-continued.

Mr. M. H. GRAY.

once laid ? No, I have no information on that subject.

493. You are not able to estimate it ?--No, I am not able to do so.

494. Then, in fact, you cannot tell whether one cable would be sufficient to carry the traffic or not?-To that extent, I know; yes, of

course.

495. You think one cable would be sufficient? - Yes.

496. Even with greatly increased traffic to what there is on the present line ?—Yes.

497. Duplicating the cable, then, you do not think is necessary?— It is an advantage, but it is

not necessary.

Sir Donald Smith.

498. Might I ask if it is within your know- ledge that anything has been definitely ascer- tained with regard to the motion or movement of the sea in very great depths, or what is the belief with regard to it? The belief is gener- ally, I take it, that after some three or four hundred fathoms the motion is very slight.

499. After 300 or 400 fathoms -Yes, except- ing, of course, at the mouth of a great river; take the Congo or the Amazon; there there is a move- ment, a current.

500. At what depth?-At the Congo as deep as 700 fathoms it makes itself felt; that is some hundreds of miles from the land.

501. Do as to life in great depths in the ocean; that is, anything that might detrimentally affect a cable?

I know of nothing.

know what has been ascertained

you

502. Tests have been taken upon that by Sir Leopold McClintock's surveya in the Atlantic?

-Yes.

503. But you are not aware of the result of them?-I am not aware that there is anything to endanger the life of a cable, any animal life, at great depth.

Sir Saul Samuel,

504. We have been told that messages have been sent by a cable over 4,000 miles. The line is from Canso in Nova Scotia to Waterfield in Ireland ?-To Waterville, yes.

505. Yes; that is 4,000 miles, and the message was carried by grouping all the lines at Canso? -Yes.

506. And the message was carried through Buccessfully?—Yes.

507. Would you consider that a fair test?— It depends on the size of the cores; yes.

508. And the depth of water too, I suppose? -The depth of water has some relation to that, and the temperature at the bottom.

509. Do you think it would be practicable to send messages 4,000 miles continuouely over a line lying at a great depth ?-Provided the core was sufficient.

510. Provided the core was sufficient?-That

[Continued.

Sir Saul Samuel-continued. runs through the Atlantic, and the temperature is approximately the same as the bottom of the Pacific; I should think it is a fair guide. There are three cables, I think; two with the same and one with a heavier core.

Chairman.

511. I have one or two further questions to ask you.

Are you aware that the Siemens Con- pany have a process of machinery by which they claim to be able to lay cables dispensing with the preliminary survey 7-I have heard of that; I have heard that that suggestion has been made by Mr. Alexander Siemens.

512. Are you able to express an opinion as to whether that process is sufficient for the purpose claimed or not?—I should not recommend it for our purpose, for our laying of cables.

513. Would not the coral formations of the islands between Australia and Fanning Island make them dangerous landing stations ?-It would not be any advantage, but it has been done on many coral islands in the Atlantic station and the cables last as well.

514. That is a question merely of the heavy construction of the shore ends?—Yes, depending on the slope, the depth. One would not make it too heavy if it had to go far down, of

course.

515. But you have provided for that?-We have estimated for it, yes.

516. Is it possible to say what would be the lifetime of the cable you have tendered for, assuming that there was no flaw in it when it was laid ?—I could not give a figure for that at all. I have an opinion that there is no why it should not last without a break for 10 or 15 years, as far as I can see.

reason

517. And what effect on the life of a cable has the depth of water; is the life shorter or longer in proportion to the depth of water it lays in ?-- In deep water the cable is much safer and much freer from accident than in shallow water; very much.

518. Now there is one question as regards the construction of the cable I should like to ask: what is the quality of the steel you propose to use in your cable?-Homogenous steel, the breaking strain?

519. Yes. It is the best steel of its kind. They vary in different types; the breaking strain varies between 84 tona to the square inch and 92 tone to the square inch, varying in different types.

520. Quite so; the types varied in your tender from 84 to 92-Yes, that is the deep-scR types.

521. In your estimate of speed, how many letters per word are you allowing for?-Five.

522. Supposing at any time the Committee wanted to see your cables in process of manu- facture, would they be able to do so?-We are not making any, except some very short ones, at present, but we are always glad to show them.

The Witness withdrew.

Mr. ALEXANDER SIEMENS, called in; and Examined.

Chairman.

523. CAN you kindly inform the Committee what firm you are connected with, and what is your position in that firm? I am at present the only resident director of the firm of Siemens Brothers. The firm was originally founded in Germany in 1847, but a branch was very soon opened here in England, and afterwards, in 1881, the firms were separated, so that Siemens Brothers is now the English name of the com- other with

connection with any no pany, firm.

524. And what has been your experience in the matter of laying submarine cables?—Well, the first time I was present as an assistant at the laying of a submarine cable was in 1869, when I was present at laying the cable along the east coast of the Black Sea for the Indo-European Telegraph. I was on my way back from Persia, where I had been employed in putting up the land line of the Indo-European. Telegraph; and then after that I was, in 1875, employed in laying the D.U.S. cable-the Direct United States cable-an Atlantic cable, and since that time I have been connected with a good many of the cables-I mean directly connected with a good many of the cables which have been laid by our firm. 525. And they include--to give us the most important---They include seven cables across the Atlantic, and some cables along the coast of Brazil, in China, and several others of minor im- portance, but of course the Atlantic cables are the most important.

526. You are aware of the general nature of the proposal that this Committee is appointed to consider -Oh, yes.

527. The first reference to us is, is this pro- posal technically practicable. In that connection presume the chief difficulties are the depth of the ocean, the absence of sufficient survey, and the length of the span from Vancouver, say, to Fanning Island ?—Yes.

528. What is the greatest depth on this route? -I believe-yes, it does not exceed 3,500 fathoms. I was going to give you the exact figure from the Admiralty chart. The Admiralty Chart No. 787, which is corrected to March 1894, gives 3,252 fathoms as the greatest depth between Honolulu and San Francisco. The bottom of the Pacific seems to be extremely even in that ridge, and therefore it is not likely that there will be any greater depths found in the imme- diate vicinity.

529. That would cross the proposed route?— Yes, I do not know whether I should show you at the present juncture a book which has been written by Mr. John James Wild, who was a member of the civilian scientific staff of Her Majesty's ship "Challenger." He published this work about the sea, about the ocean in general ; and this particular table gives the ocean depths which are found all over the world, in a general way colouring it. The very dark blue is 4,000 fathoms and over, the lighter blue is 3,000 fathoms, and the greyish blue is 2,000, so you

Chairman-continued.

see the very great depths are near Japan and rather in the northern part of the Pacific, and if you lay the cable in the proposed route from Vancouver to Fanning Island it would practi- cally avoid all these very great depths.

Sir Saul Samuel.

530. Is this from actual soundings? Well, he talks about the ocean, features of ocean life, and has taken it that the bottom between the sound- ings is even-I mean there may be ridges; of course it is only a generalisation.

Chairman.

I am

531. What is the greatest depth at which any existing cable has been laid? Well, I think a little over 3,200, or something like that. not sure that the French cable to New Caledonia is not a deep cable, in very deep water; but in the Atlantic occur depths greater than 3,000 fathoms, therefore the difference between that and the proposed route is not very great.

532. I find in your memorandum the third paragraph is to this effect: "Some of the Atlantic cables, &c." Now will you explain to the Commit- tee what you mean by those words, "support 9,000 fathoms of its own weight in sen water"?-That is to say, the weight of a cable of course depends whether it is weighed in the air dry or in the air wet, or whether it is weighed in the sea water, where of course it will be lighter. For instance, I have got here a complete record of the types I see that the deep-sen type of proposed by us. the longest cable weighs, dry, 407 cwt., wet, 42-3 cwt., and in the sea only 23.8 ewt., and at the same time that the breaking strain of the deep-sea type is 10-6 tons, so if you divide the 10-6 tons by 23-8 cwt. you get about nine nautical miles as the length of cable which may hang from the ship in the sea water before the strain becomes so great that the cable breaks.

533. That observation applies, I take it, only to the strength of the cable for lifting purposes? -Well, of course, when it is lifted then it would come into play, but I mean if you hang the cable over the ship, and if you do not construct your cable properly you cannot lay it in 4,000 fathoms at all, because it would break.

534. That applies to laying and lifting?— That applies to laying and lifting ; and you see nine miles would be very excessive-the strength; but you must consider that if you lift the cable, if you hook the cable, and lift it up, you have it hanging in a loop over the hook. You have got four miles on this side and four miles on that side, therefore the strain on the cable which is on the grapnel will be equal to eight miles, say to nine miles, if you lean to safety.

535. Must a cable always lie on the bottom of the occan ?-Oh, yes; you see it is specifically heavier than water, therefore it must go to the bottom, except if there are precipices, but, if possible, you avoid them.

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Chairman-continued.

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Mr. SIEMENS.

536. You would never knowingly leave it hanging over a barrier from ridge to ridge, of any width? No, certainly not, because in time it will chafe through. For instance, I do not know the year, but Sir John. Pender said of the D.U.S. Cable, that they had found that it was hanging 22 years on a ledge of rock, and at last it chafed through; so there may not be any imme- diate danger, but it is pretty sure to go when it does hang. And in addition, of cour-e, in these very great depths, there are very few currents. I think that has also been found out in the Challenger Expedition, and therefore there could not be much of the chafing action.

537. Hitherto, I think, it has been the uni- versal practice to take a very careful survey of any route proposed for a cable by preliminary soundings before laying it?-Yes. I mean the necessity arises from the necessity of knowing the depth to arrange the slack properly; I mean the questions are intinuately connected; you cannot sever them. If you want to have a cable easily repaired, you must see that your slack is distributed over the whole length of the cable as evenly as possible, so that when your grapnel lifts cable there is no strain at first, and when the strain comes on, that the strain is as even as possible, so as to prevent the cable slipping through the grapnel and chafing itself, and probably breaking and interfering with the lifting operation, which, in deep water, of course, is a very delicate one, and in order to be able to dispose this lack very evenly you must know exactly (I mean according to the old methods) the depths of the water, because it has been mathematically proved that the retarding etrain ought to be equal to the weight of a length of cable hanging from the ship directly down to the bottom; that is to say, if you have a depth of 2,000 fathome, and you have this cable, for instance, of which I was talking, weighing 23-8 cwt. per nautical mile, that is, per 1,000 fathoms you can take it, you must make your breaking strain 47 6 cwt., so as to lay your cable without any Black, and, of course, if you wish to have slack you would diminish the retarding strain accordingly. Now, obviously the engineer who is regulating the retarding strain on the cable by a hand brake with a dial in front of him, seeing the strain at every moment, must know exactly the depth so as to put the right strain on. If he does not put the right strain on the cable is laid either too taut or too slack, and anyhow he cannot lay it regularly, and it is the regular distribution of slack which is afterwards of the greatest import-

ance.

Chairman--continued.

[Continued

it is much better to pay out, at the same time as you pay out the cable, a steel wire which will act in the way that the so-called ground log used to act. It is laid with no slack what- ever, which you can easily ascertain.

You rake pianoforte wire of good quality and let it run out over a similar brake wheel as the cable. itself. Then you put on such retarding strain as you think, from experience, is suitable; then, after a while increase the retarding strain. If you find that the running out of the wire and the speed of the ship are still in the same proportion it is a pretty good indication that the wire is being laid quite taut, and, therefore, in that way you can measure exactly the speed with which a ship is passing over the ground. And this method has also the great advantage that it eliminates the influence of all the currents. You see, if you are laying cable in a three-knot current, I mean to exaggerate it, and you are going with the current, you are really going over the ground the speed of the ship, plus three knots, but in the ocean nothing indicates to you whether there is a current or what its direction is, because you are in the middle of it. You only can measure with an ordinary log the relative speed of the ship and the current, but not the speed of the ship over the ground, whereas this wire being fastened on the far end and being paid out taut gives you the exact distance which the ship travels over the ground, and which you can always control by astronomical observation in the usual manner. I mean that it is not a thing that you have to blindly trust to this wire, but whenever you get good observation you can check it, and, as a matter of fact, it is constantly checked, and

have always found that it is absolutely reliable. Now, we have so connected the paying-out gear of the wire and the paying-out gear of the cable that the man at the brake has a dial in front of him giving the percentage of slack, and I may say I should be extremely pleased to show you the apparatus, if would favour me with a call at our works. I mean I should very much like to illustrate a good many of the things which I am saying now by actual demonstrations that you can see. The apparatus is perfectly simple, and it indicates continually to the man at the brake the percentage of slack paid out. When he sees that the slack has a tendency to get greater he knows he must put a little more weight on the brake; if he finds that the slack is diminishing, he at once takes off some weight. In that way he can perfectly regulate the percentage of slack laid. Now, reverting again to what I said before, that the brake power is also in proportion to the depths of the water, conversely, you can get from the strains which are recorded always the contour of the bottom of the sea. I have got here a dia- gram which we made during the laying of the last Commercial cable in 1894. The red line is a record of the strains, and the black points are soundings, either taken from the charts or taken at the time while the cable was being laid. You can see the black points and the red lines are coinciding very well, showing that this method gives you the contour of the sea as you are going along. And I may also say that this method has

• See page 236.

538. That describes what the process has hitherto been? What the process has hitherto been. I mean this was all really demonstrated and found out nearly 40 years ago, in 1857, when the Sardinia-Bona Cable was laid, and Dr. Werner Siemens worked it out with Mr. Elliott and one other cable engineer, I forget his name. And then Dr. Werner Siemens proposed the wire method at once; he said: all this calcu- lating and all this sounding does not help you if there is a ridge on the way, and you have happened not to have sounded on that particular ridge, so that you do not know it; therefore

you

we

16 November 1896.]

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Mr. SIEMENS.

Chairman-continued.

been used for six out of the seven cables which we laid across the Atlantic, indicating each time when the ship approached the Flemish Cap.

Sir Saul Samuel.

539. What is the greatest depth of water here? This is close to Ireland. That is a small depth, only it was enough to illustrate that this contour line will really fall in, within reasonable limits, with the soundings.

Chairman.

540. Now, are we to deduce from that that in the opinion of your firm this invention of Dr. Werner Siemens altogether dispenses with the necessity for all previous survey?-No, not altogether, because you must have some sort of notice of the depths of water you have to encounter, so that you can construct your cable in accordance with the maximum depths which you have to meet with.

541. But now, take the case of this proposed Pacific cable, have you in the existing surveys of the route sufficient information to enable with the assistance of the invention to lay the cable?-Yes, certainly.

542. Yes, certainly ?—Yes.

you

543-4. The span from Vancouver to Fanning Island would be the longest span in existence ? -I believe so, yes.

545. Have you any doubt as to the practic- ability of a regular telegraphic service through a span of that length ?-None whatever. I asked Mr. Ward, the vice-president of the Commercial Cable Company, who happened to be here in the summer, whether he would be good enough to let some experiments be made with their cables, and in consequence of that—- Oh, no; it was for Mr. Sandford Fleming, I think, he did it. In consequence of that he connected two of their cables, so that they had a length of over 4,000 miles, and they tele- graphed through that and had no difficulty, of course, whatever, and obtained a reasonable speed. I think they got seven words, which is in accordance with the theory of the KR law which Mr. Preece, I believe, announced first.

546. As regards the route of this cable, have you any special observations to offer as regards the route ?-Well, I have only, of course, to say that if a route could be found which contains only comparatively small spans that will be the cheapest; that is to say, for a given speed you can lay cables which have less copper and gutta percha than is necessary for any long span, but I would not let that determine that. I mean I know, of course, I have seen in the newspapers, and so on, that the idea is to have it all in British possessions, and I would say that in the 3,300 miles between Vancouver and Fanning, Island there is no obstacle whatever.

547. For that span of 3,300 miles I suppose it requires a cable of a distinctly superior type? -Well, no; I mean, of course, generally speaking, I should always put in a superior type of cable for an important undertaking like this. It wants it. But it is only a question of copper

Chairman-continued.

[Continued.

and gutta percha, how much copper and gutta percha should you put in the core to get a cer- tain speed. I do not think that the cable, I inean any yard of cable, need be better for that long span than it is for the shorter spans. The quality ought to be exactly the same, I think, in all the spans, whether it is long or short. The length of the span influences only the weight of materiale employed, nothing else. →

548. I shall come to a question about the composition of the cable presently. The Dominion Government called for tenders in 1894 ?—Yes.

549. Under Forms A, B, and C ?--Yes. 550. A.-The cable to be owned and con- trolled by Government, to be worked under Government authority, and to be kept in repair by the contractor for three years. B. The cable to be owned, maintained, and worked by a company under a fixed subsidy for a term of C. The cable to be owned, maintained, years. and worked by a company under a Government guarantee ?—Yes.

551. And they gave to tenderers a choice of eight alternative routes ?—Yes.

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"case.

552. The character of the cable and the nature of the shore-ends was dealt with under this heading: "Proposals will describe the type "of cables intended to be used on each section, "and state the weight of conductors and insula- "tors per knot in each case. The best descrip- "tion of landing cables must be employed at "terminal points and all mid-stations. The pro- posals will describe the character, weight, and "length of shore-end cables to be used in each The idea entertained by your firm as to the proper cables and shore-ends for this pur- pose is contained in your tender and specifica- tion, I believe ?—Yes; we have modified them since a little, because we had followed in the proposals to the Canadian Government the usual practice of having seven different types of cable, but as in nearly all the cases the deep water is very close to the shore it would be an unneces sary complication to have so many types, and therefore we would rather supplement that, and now alter it into five types only instead of seven types. I sent a case with samples over to show that.

553. The speed was to be in no case less than 12 words per minute?—Yes.

554. Is that an adequate speed, in your opinion? ...Well, it gives a good many words per year. I think it is something like 5,000,000 words, or something like that. I think I have got it here. I may say that, as a matter of fact, the section which we proposed would give 15 words, but it is always better to have in the contract a smaller number than you can actually do, and I see the 15 words would correspond to over 7,000,000 words per annum, and the speed of sending mes- sages through the cable could practically be doubled by introducing a duplex system of work- ing. At present there are 1,306,000 words sent, according to Sir John Pender's letter, which ap- peared in 1894.

555. Have you ever laid a cable of importance that was calculated to give only a speed of 12

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