Cable-laying ship ready to connect

New Portland-based vessel will lay fiber-optic cable on the ocean floor

By Ben Jacklet

The Portland Tribune, Dec 5, 2003, Updated Oct 30, 2009

A new ship was christened under the Morrison Bridge this week with the goal of bringing Portland closer to Asia.

The Tyco Durable will tie up at Swan Island’s Portland Shipyard, but its work will be done far offshore Ñ installing and repairing fiber-optic cable along the ocean floor. The projects should improve Internet and phone connections throughout the Pacific Rim.

The 460-foot steel vessel has a nautical range of 25,000 miles, meaning it can circle the globe without refueling, and can carry up to 4,600 kilometers of cable on board at a time. The ship is equipped with five diesel engines, a remote-controlled underwater bulldozer and a robotic vehicle that retrieves damaged cable thousands of miles beneath the surface of the ocean.

The Durable, built in Singapore, is the second cable ship owned by Tyco International to dock at the shipyard. Company officials are banking that both Tyco Durable and Global Sentinel will have plenty of work throughout the Pacific as the telecom industry rebounds.

David Coughlan, president of Tyco Telecommunications, predicted at Tuesday’s downtown christening that “the Tyco Durable will lead our company out of this telecom downturn.”

The industry boomed in the 1990s but crashed under the weight of its excesses. The huge conglomerate Tyco, based in Bermuda, suffered financial losses and scandals.

Its former chief executive, L. Dennis Kozlowski, built Tyco into the world’s largest maker of submarine fiber-optic cable before resigning last year amid charges that he evaded taxes and took hundreds of millions of dollars in unauthorized compensation and stock.

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