Cable layer

A cable ship is a working ship that can lay submarine cables through a body of water.

The end of the laying of a submarine cable

Before using the cable laying machine drive with sonar equipment to explore the seabed equipped survey vessels in low speed (about five kilometers per hour ) is a possible route from. The goal is to find a suitable route with the lowest possible fluctuations in the soil profile to prevent unnecessary cable consumption by slopes and valleys.

The loading and placement of the cable on the ship will take about two weeks. The cable is wound layer by layer and with high precision on large spools in the cable laying machine.

During use, the speed of the cable laying machine must be tailored to the nature of the seabed to always interpret the appropriate length. If the depth of the ocean floor varies and thus increases the cable length required by slopes and cuts, must drive slower because more cable must be settled. The speed of the rolls of cable always remains the same, since the train, which acts on the cable is limited. The monitoring of the speed is achieved by on-board GPS receiver.

The mislaid the cable laying ship submarine is particularly plowed or flushed into coastal waters from redrawn cable laying plow into the seabed. So the submarine cable is better protected from damage by anchors, trawls and other.

Cable plow for laying of submarine cables on the seabed

Cable laying machine on board the Oceanic Viking

Cable installation in the North Sea: actual route according to GPS (blue), schematic representation in maps (red)

Repair of a submarine cable (Animation)

Significant Kabelleger

Cable ship Leon Thevenin ( Bugsicht )

Cable ship Global Sentinel

French cable -laying vessel René Descartes

One of the famous cable-laying was the Great Eastern, a very hapless ship. As a passenger steamer very unsuccessfully to use only provisionally as a cable ship. The first designed as a cable ship and successfully used the ship was built at Burmeister & Wain in Copenhagen 1872 HC Oersted, the store Nordiske Telegraph Selskab. Two years later came the much more modern Faraday. The 1874 ship was put into service for the first time united all the typical characteristics of a cable ship and therefore created all of the following designs.

One of the largest cable ship is built in 1962 and baptized the Transocean Cable Ship Company belonging Long Lines. It was designed by Gibbs & Cox in New York and built at Schlieker shipyard in Hamburg. She has two through twelve decks and watertight bulkheads. At the bow, the cable feed rollers and the buoys racks, a little further back, the two buoys cranes and the cable motor. Because of the necessary maneuverability, the ship is driven electrically turbo. Each of the turbines drives a gear driving a generator, a generator of the common power supply and one for the motor cable. The electric traction motors afford at 131/min per 2830 kW ( 3850 hp). In the two boilers with a steam pressure of 42 bar is produced. The ship has a bow thruster with an output of 750 hp. The Long Lines can load about 3700 km submarine cable, which they normally interprets over rear with 8 kn.