A Woman's Journey through the Philippines / On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route

by Florence Kimball Russel

To one who has never witnessed the difficulties of propelling a rowboat through the heavy breakers of some of these Philippine coast towns, it would be hard to appreciate the struggles of the Signal Corps to land shore ends at the different cable stations. More than once men were almost drowned in its accomplishment but fortunately on the whole trip, despite many narrow escapes, not a man was seriously injured in the performance of his duty. Once landed on the beach, the shore end was laid in the trench dug for it, one end of the cable entering the cable hut through a small hole in its flooring, where after some adjustment and much shifting of plugs and coaxing of galvanometers, the ship way out in the bay was in communication with the land, through that tiny place, scarce larger than a sentry-box, in which a man has barely room enough to turn around.

Each telegraph office, when finally established, looks for all the world like a neat housekeeper’s storeroom, with its shelf after shelf of batteries, all neatly labelled like glass jars of jellies and jams. It positively made one’s mouth water to see them, and only the rows of wires on the wall, converging into the switchboard, and from thence to the operator’s desk, where the little telegraph instruments were so soon to click messages back and forth, could convince one that the jars contained only “juice,” as operators always call the electric current.

When this work on shore was completed, the ship paid out a mile and a half of cable, cut, and buoyed it, awaiting our return from the next station, where, because of the inaccurate charts already mentioned, it would be necessary to first take soundings before we could proceed to lay the cable. These buoys, so large that they were facetiously called “men” by the punster of the ship, are painted a brilliant scarlet, which makes them a conspicuous feature of the sea-scape. Sometimes a flagstaff and a flag are fastened to the buoy, and often it is converted for the ship’s benefit info an extemporaneous lighthouse by the addition of an oil lamp attached to its summit.

That night at Dumaguete the swift current unfortunately swung our ship’s anchor past the buoy to which the cable was attached, so that at daylight the next morning, instead of sailing for Oroquieta, Mindanao, as we bad expected, the buoy was picked up and a half mile of cable cut out, a new mile being spliced on in its place. When this was completed we paid out the fresh cable, buoyed it, and started for Oroquieta, which was to have been our next cable landing, stopping every five knots for soundings and observations.

One of the officers with the sextant ascertained the angle between two points on the coast, while other men, under the generalship of one of the cable experts, took deep-sea soundings, not only that the depth of the water might be known, but also its temperature and the character of the bottom, so one could judge of its effect upon the cable when laid, every idiosyncrasy of that cable being already a study of some import to the testing department.

This deep-sea sounding is a very necessary feature of cable laying, as unexpected depths of water or unlooked for changes in submarine geography, when not taken into account, might prove disastrous to the cable being laid. The sounding apparatus is of great interest, being a compact little affair consisting of a small engine that with a self-acting brake helps regulate the wire sounding-line as it is lowered into the water, and after sounding heaves it up again. When this weight touches bottom the drum ceases to revolve, due to the automatic brake, and the depth can be read off on the scale to one side of the apparatus. A cleverly devised little attachment to the sinker brings up in its grasp a specimen of sea bottom, so that one can ascertain if it be sand or rock, and whether or not it is suitable for cable laying.

The next day lingers in my memory as a profusely illustrated story, uneventful as to incident, and bound in the blue of sea and sky, with gilt edges of sunshine. Before our five o’clock breakfast we saw the “Cross hung low to the dawn,” and at night, anchored near our last sounding, fell asleep under the same Cross. The morning of the next day was but a repetition of the morning before, even to the early rising, for at our breakfast hour the moon had not yet turned out her light, nor were the stars a whit less brilliant than when we went to bed. “It’s too early for the morning to be well aired,” one of our cable experts was wont to whimsically complain at these daybreak gatherings, but by the time we had finished breakfast the night would have whitened into dawn, and before most people were astir an incredible amount of work had been accomplished by that little band of men, seemingly inured to fatigue and the loss of sleep.

All that morning on the way to Oroquieta the shore end of the cable was paid out of the tank and coiled in the hold ready for instant use when we should reach our destination. The music of the cable on the drum, the voice of some one in authority calling “Cobra—cobra,” to the natives in the tank, and their monotonous “Sigi do—sigi do,” half-sung, half-chanted, seemed an integral part of the day’s beauty. Even the natives themselves, guiding the heavy, unwieldy, treacherous cable round and round in the water-soaked tank, that only one turn should be lifted at a time, grinned affably and perspiringly at those of us peering over the railing at them—grimy tar-stained figures that they were, the sunlight bringing their faces out in strong relief against the dark backgound.

That afternoon we anchored off Oroquieta, but the surf was so heavy that it was felt unsafe to send one of the small boats ashore, especially as no one knew the location of the landing. Strangely enough, no boats of any kind came out to the ship, not even a native banca, so that our intercourse with Oroquieta was purely telescopic. Through our good lens we saw many a soldier, field-glass in hand, looking wistfully in our direction. Other soldiers walked up and down the beach on sentry duty, still others seemed to be standing guard over a small drove of horses in a palm grove a little to the right of the principal buildings, while many more lounged lazily on the broad steps of the church, or, leaning out of the windows of the tribunal, evidently used as a barracks, stared stolidly at the strange ship in the harbour. That every man wore side-arms seemed an indication the rebels were still rampant on the northern coast of Mindanao, and the fact of numberless native boats passing by with a pharisaical lack of interest in our presence spoke insurrection even more plainly.

Through the glass we all took turns in watching retreat, the little handful of khaki-clad men standing at attention as the stars and stripes fluttered down the flagstaff. Oroquieta was a lonely looking place, built entirely of nipa, with the exception of the inevitable white church and convento, so we were not sorry when the Powers-that-Be decided it was a poor cable landing, and gave orders for the ship to proceed to Misamis, Mindanao, on the following day. Early next morning we weighed anchor, and, still taking soundings, arrived off Misamis about ten o’clock, after a sail which one never could forget, as the coast of Mindanao is rarely beautiful and much more tropical than anything we had seen even on the island of Negros.