The Grand Banks earthquake breaks cables in sequence
An earthquake at the southern edge of the Grand Banks, south of Newfoundland, triggered a large submarine slope failure. Cables in the immediate area broke at once; further out, transatlantic telegraph cables broke one after another, progressively further from the source, over a period of about thirteen hours. Twelve cables were broken in all. The sequence was recorded because cable stations knew precisely when each circuit died, and it became, more than twenty years later, the evidence from which turbidity currents were inferred.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- The turbidity current · natural phenomenon · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
Turbidity currents and submarine slumps, and the 1929 Grand Banks earthquake
Supports the inference of turbidity currents from the sequential failure of transatlantic telegraph cables after the Grand Banks earthquake of 18 November 1929 — twelve cables broken, the later failures stepping outward over about thirteen hours — and the corroborating sediment evidence from cores on the abyssal plain. V55 verification basis: NOT read. The paper title, journal and argument were carried by retrieved search results; the figures for cable numbers and elapsed time come from those summaries and from later literature citing the paper, not from the paper itself.
American Journal of Science · 1952 · Partly verified
B. C. Heezen and M. Ewing, "Turbidity currents and submarine slumps, and the 1929 Grand Banks [Newfoundland] earthquake", American Journal of Science, 1952
Recorded on The turbidity current
- The Grand Banks earthquake breaks cables in sequence
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- Four cables fail off Côte d'Ivoire and thirteen countries lose connectivity
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- Four cables fail off Côte d'Ivoire and thirteen countries lose connectivity · 2024-03-14
- The Hengchun earthquake doublet off southern Taiwan · 2006-12-26 12:26 UTC
- Cables in the Luzon Strait break in sequence over nine hours · 2006-12-26 – 2006-12-27