cablelaying

I'll have a dry martini please ... or maybe it has not been invented yet? The sun is well over the yard-arm where I am.

It's a long way from the ferry to Holyhead! :-)

Looks like it must be 1860-1865 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Eastern The Sept 1861 voyage looks like a contender - "On the second day out [from Liverpool] the wind increased to gale force, causing the ship to roll heavily"

Although, the captain of the ship from 1866-78, during its cable-laying years, was a Wicklow man en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Halpin It seems odd that the saloon and dining saloon would be so luxuriously appointed for that kind of work though.

ccferrie The absolute earliest this could be is 1865, as Lawrence didn't set up in business until then. But logistically speaking, it was probably at least a few years after that. (Robert French, photographer on three-quarters of our Lawrence Collection didn't even start working for William Lawrence until 1880-ish....)

9 February 1975 was a Sunday ... a great day to lay a cable.

beachcomber australia And the favourite day for rail replacement bus services.

www.jamescuthbertson.co.uk/about/company-history.php

Alongside producing tracked vehicles, working on underwater pipelines, laying cables on both railways and motorways, Cuthbertsons’ became well known for plant recovery.

looks like they're using a plow to dig the trench.
This wasn't without it's dangers

It's a cable laying plough. The cable, off the spool is fed down and out through a hole at the bottom and back of the plough. There's no trench as such as the soil back fills on itself as the plough moves along.

The first of the islands to be electrified, in 1957 acccording to Wiki en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arranmore This cable must be for telephone, not power Who's the guy with both cine and a twin lens?

Suck Diesel Similar to this Rollie? (in another Tynan Donegal shot)

I wonder if that is Denis Tynan, and his wife took the picture?

Suck Diesel They had a telephone cable from 1938 according to a report in the Dail on the Post & Telegraphs from 1939. A new telephone cable has also been laid between Arranmore Island and the mainland at Burtonport (Co. Donegal) in substitution of the wireless telegraph service previously operative which was in need of renewal. A public call office on the island will be opened shortly. So this is either actually from 1957, or it is a replacement telephone/power cable.

Make that 1956 for the electrification according to the ESB. It looks like there was an interesting article about the laying of that cable in the August 1956 edition of the REO (Rural Electrification Office) Report, but I can't locate a copy.