Subsea cable repair · Falmouth Report a fault

The trade · 1850 to now

Since 1858

The first cable across the Atlantic worked for about a month. Cables have broken ever since, and ships have gone out to mend them. On screen: that 1858 cable, a seven-strand copper core in four layers of gutta-percha, tarred hemp and ten wires wrapped in hemp.

  1. 1850

    The Channel

    The tug Goliath lays the first line across the English Channel: a copper wire in gutta-percha, with no other protection. It fails.

  2. 1858

    The Atlantic, for a month

    HMS Agamemnon and USS Niagara each carry half the cable and splice it in mid-ocean. It opens on 16 August and fails about a month later.

    HMS Agamemnon at sea laying the 1858 Atlantic cable, a whale crossing the line in the foreground.
    R. C. Dudley, H.M.S. Agamemnon laying the Atlantic cable in 1858 · The Met, CC0
  3. 1866

    The cable that lasted

    The Great Eastern, built as a liner, lays the first lasting transatlantic cable. The picture is from her try the year before: splicing on deck after the cable's first accident.

    Sailors and engineers on the deck of the Great Eastern splicing the cable beside a gun carriage.
    R. C. Dudley, Splicing the cable on board the Great Eastern, 1865 · The Met, CC0
  4. 1870

    Porthcurno, not Falmouth

    The first cable lands at Porthcurno near Land's End, chosen over busy Falmouth because ships' anchors there were a danger to cables. Between the wars it runs up to 14 cables, the largest cable station in the world.

  5. 1872

    A ship built to repair

    CS H. C. Oersted is the first ship designed for cable repair. By now every continent except Antarctica is linked by cable.

    Lamplit cable tank below deck on the Great Eastern, men coiling cable around the central cone.
    R. C. Dudley, Coiling the cable in the after-tank of the Great Eastern, 1865 · The Met, CC0
  6. 1912

    Mackay-Bennett

    The Halifax repair ship, between jobs on the France-to-Canada cable, is sent to recover the dead of the Titanic. She had the only hold big enough.

  7. 1929

    Twelve cables in a row

    An earthquake off the Grand Banks sets off an undersea landslide that snaps 12 transatlantic cables. In 1952 scientists use the order of the breaks to document a turbidity current for the first time.

  8. 1945

    Polyethylene

    The first submarine cable insulated with polyethylene crosses the Channel. Gutta-percha's century is over.

  9. 1956

    Voices

    HMTS Monarch completes TAT-1, the first transatlantic telephone cable.

  10. 1988

    Light

    TAT-8, the first transatlantic fibre cable, lands at Widemouth Bay in Cornwall: 280 Mbit/s, 40,000 telephone circuits. It was full within eighteen months.

  11. 1995

    Amplifiers

    Erbium-doped fibre amplifiers go into submarine repeaters: the light is boosted as light, without turning it back into electricity.

  12. 2022

    Tonga

    A volcanic eruption cuts the island's only cable. The repair takes several weeks, with Tonga largely cut off in the meantime.

©BIGHT 2026 BIGHT and CS Helford are fictional. The facts about cables are real: see the sources. Sources & credits