THOSE OTHER SUBMARINE UTILITIES by Bill Wall During this somewhat rather slow market for submarine telecom cable installers I am constantly reminded on a daily basis of the busy times of bygone days. (Actually those days were not that long ago). I reside in Manasquan, New Jersey USA. Manasquan is a pleasant beachfront (Seaside for the Brits!) town on the Jersey Shore about 60 miles south of New York City. During the summer it is a magnet for hundreds of thousands of “Bennies”1 from New York and North Jersey who go “Down the Shore” for their week-end R&R.
During the winter it reverts to a pleasant beachfront town with a genuine “Hometown USA” atmosphere. Manasquan is also a major terminus for transatlantic submarine cables on the US East Coast; numerous systems (PTAT, Tat-14, Gemini, TGN, Apollo etc) come ashore at beach landings about a mile from my house. I park my car each night on top of a C&W manhole housing the Apollo South land cable. As it makes its way from the beach to the terminal station Apollo runs right along my street a mere twenty feet from
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my front porch steps. I have spent countless hours explaining to neighbors how this thin strand of glass, copper & steel runs down the road to the beach and then pops over the Atlantic Ocean to the northern coast of France where it once again meanders down a suburban road to a terminal station, amazing they say. So after driving over Apollo in the morning I head to my office in Toms River NJ, which is about ten miles north of Tuckerton NJ, another major East Coast terminus of transatlantic telecom systems. At the week-end I coach my sons soccer team which plays on a field directly in front of the TAT 14, Gemini & PTAT terminal stations. Cap this with the fact that almost 70% of my company’s revenues were derived from the installation and maintenance of submarine telecom cable during the period 1998 thru 2001 and the pessimist in you could say that we were in for troubled times from late 2001 onwards.
Other Marine Markets Having started my marine career on a C&W cableship and then spent the next 12 years traveling the world repairing, laying or burying submarine telecom cables I was under the impression that these copper & steel (coax) links were the only submarine utility (or at least the only one worth worrying about). 1
Bennies: a nickname used by Jersey Shore locals for out
of town visitors who come for the “Benefits” of the shore