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On the Survey by the S.S. ‘Britannia’ of the Cable Route between Bermuda, Turk's Islands, and Jamaica

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2014

R. E. Peake  and
Sir John Murray
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Extract

The following is a brief account of the principal points of interest resulting from the survey lately made to find a suitable route for a cable to be laid from Bermuda to Turk's Islands and from thence to Jamaica.

As engineers to the Direct West India Cable Co., my firm, Messrs Clark, Forde, & Taylor, strongly advised that a more than usually complete set of soundings should be taken along the route over which it was proposed that the cable should be laid, our principal reason being that, as the Bermuda group has been raised almost vertically from the bed of the Atlantic by volcanic action, it was impossible, with the limited information available, to say whether similar action might not have taken place elsewhere on the proposed route for the new cable.

The task of carrying out this survey was undertaken by the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Co. with their s.s. ‘Britannia,’ which was fitted up with all necessary apparatus, and was also well adapted for the work.

Sounding operations were commenced off Grand Turk Island on the 4th November 1897, and completed on the 2nd December following at Bermuda, during which time 182 soundings were taken, apart from the profile soundings taken off Grand Turk. The laying of the cable was commenced at Bermuda on the 5th January 1898, and completed on the 18th of the same month.

As a result of this work the following suggest themselves as points worthy of notice:—

(1) The even slope of the ground from the neighbourhood of Bermuda to the deepest water found in Lat. 24° 50′ N., no indication being discovered of any upheaval similar to that which has produced the Bermudas with their adjoining shoals.

Type
Proceedings
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh , Volume 22 , 1899 , pp. 409 - 429
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1899

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References

page 412 note * Narr. Chall. Exp., vol. ii., Appendix A, 1882Google Scholar.

page 413 note * See Temperature Co-efficients of ‘Conductivity’ Copper, by Clark, Forde, and Taylor, London, 1899 (published privately).

page 413 note † For complete list of the soundings, see Admiralty Blue-book: List of Oceanic Depths and Serial Temperature Observations received at the Admiralty during the year 1897, from H.M. Surveying Ships, Indian Marine Survey, and British Submarine Telegraph Companies; Hydrographic Department, Admiralty, London, February 1898, pp. 52–56. See also the accompanying map, on which nearly all the ‘Britannia’ soundings are laid down in a distinctive type, as well as all other known deep-water soundings in the same region.

page 425 note * See Murray, and Renard, , Deep-Sea Deposits Chall. Exp., pp. 41, 61, 149, and 153Google Scholar.

page 425 note † See Murray, , Bull. Mus. Comp. Zoöl., vol. xii. p. 46, 1885Google Scholar.

page 428 note * See Murray, , Bull. Mus. Comp. Zoöl., vol. xii. p. 42, 1885Google Scholar; also Agassiz, , Three Cruises of the ‘Blake,’ vol. i. p. 276, 1888Google Scholar.