The ship continues to continent connected

A ship’s size of a football field, which includes more than 50 engineers and technicians, cooking the ocean around Africa to keep the online internal.

It provides an important service, as the internet blacout internet shows internet when Internet cables are buried underwater damaged.

Millions from Lagos to Nairobi falls in digital darkness: Advances nourishing apps collapsed and banking transactions failed. It has left businesses and individuals struggling.

This is Léon Thévenin who heals many cable failures. The ship, where a BBC team has recently spent a week by Ghana’s coast, made this specialized repair work in the last 13 years

“Because of me, countries remain connected,” Shuru Avense, a cable captering from South Africa working on a ship for more than a decade, speaking BBC.

“These people at home have a job because I brought the main feed,” he said.

“You have heroes who can save lives – I’m a hero because I have saved communication.”

His arrogance and aspiration reflects the sentiments of skilled crews in Léon Thévenin, standing eighty floors high and carry a large equipment.

The internet is a network of computer servers – to read this article most likely to be at least one of the 600 fiber optic cables around the world collected data on your screen.

Most of these servers are in the data centers outside Africa and fiber optic cables run on the sea floor that connects them to the continent.

Data traveling through hair wires thin fiberglass, which are often grouped in pairs and protected by various layers of plastic and copper depending on the wiring of the coast.

“Until the country’s servers are not, you need a connection. A cable running from one country, which is accessing users’ users as well as LETJAMIN’s chief representative.

Undersea fiber optic cables are designed to work for 25 years with minimal maintenance, but if they are damaged, it is often due to human activity.

“The freshness is generally not broken

“But most of the time the people who have been antering where they don’t need and fisher the trawlers sometimes scraping the seas, so we usually see scars.”

Mr. Smith also said that natural disasters cause harm to the wiring, especially in the parts of the continent with severe weather conditions. He gave an example of the ocean at the shore of the Congo’s democratic Republic, where the Congo River looks at Atlantic.

“In the Congo Canyon, where they have a lot of rain and decrease in the rain, it can make waves harmful,” he said.

The deliberate sabotage is hard to know – but Léon thévenin crew says they do not see any obvious evidence themselves.

One year ago, three critical cable in the Red Sea – Seacom, AAE-1 and EIG – blinded, reported to an anchor to a shipConnection interrupt for millions of entirely Africa, including Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Mozambique.

A month later, on March 2024, a separate set of WACS breaks, ACE, SAT-3, and Mainone cable on the West Acrico beach Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Liberia.

Anything that requires the internet to act feeling the strain as well as repulsive for several weeks.

After May, yet another disability: Seacom and Eassy Cables suffered at South Africa, hit the countries of East Africa.

Such errors are found by electric test and signal vigor through wiring.

“There may be 3,000 volts on a cable and suddenly it fell into 50 volts, it means having a problem,” Loic Wallerand, the mission chief.

There are local teams with the ability to deal with faults in shallow water, but if they are found beyond a depth of 50m (164ft), the ship is called the action. Its crew can heal wires deeper than 5,000m below sea level.

The recovery witnessed to the BBC in Ghana took a week to deal with, but most internet users do not notice that traffic is redired by another cable.

The nature of each repair depends on the cable part damaged.

If the fiberglass of core breaks, it means that data cannot travel to the network and should be sent to another cable.

But some countries in Africa have only one cable serving them. This means that a cable is damaged by this way left the affected area without the internet.

In other times, the protection of fiber layers can be damaged, the mean transmission transmission is still, but in a lowest recovery. In both cases, the crew should find the exact location of the damage.

In case of broken fiberglass, a lily signal is sent to the cable and by its reflection, the crew can determine where the break is.

If the cable insulation problem – is known as a “shunt fault” – it is more complicated and an electric signal should be sent to the cable in a physical way.

After preventing the possible place for the error, the operation moved to the ROV team.

Built like a bulldozer, Rov, weighed 9.5 tonnes, lowed by water from the ship where it was guided by the sea floor.

About five crew staff work with a crane operator to deploy it – once it is released from his use, called a navel rope, it floats attractive.

“It doesn’t drown,” said Mr Portheld, explaining how it used four horizontal and vertical trusters to work in any direction.

Three ROV cameras allow the team to go to the proper location of errors as it works in the bed of the ocean.

Once found, ROV cut the affected part using its two limbs, then tied it to a rope brought back to the ship.

Here the wrong section alone and replaced by splicing and involving it on a new cable – a process like the Weldings and where 24 hours in the BBC’s case witnessed.

Then the cable is carefully lowered by the ocean bed and then ROV makes a final journey to inspection it is well updated.

If an alert is received about a damaged cable, Léon Thévenin Crew is ready to sail within 24 hours. However, their response time depends on many reasons: The location of the ship, the availability of spare cables and bureaucrat challenges.

“Permissions can be weeks. Sometimes we sail in the affected country and wait for the beach until paper paper,” says Mr. Wallerand.

Often, crews spend more than six months at sea each year.

“It’s about work,” says Captain Thomas Quehec.

But talking to members of the crew between the work, it is difficult to ignore their personal sacrifices.

They were taken from various backgrounds and nationalities: French, South Africa, Filipino, Malagasy and more.

Adrian Morgan, the principal steward of the ship from South Africa, earned five consecutive wedding anniversaries.

“I want to give up. My family is hard to avoid, but my wife encouraged me. I did it for them,” he said.

Another South Africa, Maintenance Noel Geeieman, concerned that he could forget his son’s marriage for several weeks if the ship was called on another mission.

“I heard that we could go to Durban (in South Africa). My son was very sad because he had no mama,” said Mr. Geeieman, who had died his wife three years ago.

“But I retired for six months,” he added a smile.

Despite emotional emotional, camaraderie is aboard.

If the off-duty, crew members have played video games in the lounge or sharing hall foods in the hurdle of the ship.

Their entry into the profession as kind of their background.

While followed by Mr. Tootstepps, Chief Cook, Solang African Remario Smith, went to the sea to escape a life crime.

“I was involved in the gangs when I was young,” Mr. Smith said, “My son was born when I was 25, and I knew I had to change my life.”

Like others aboard the boat to appreciate the role of the ship on the continent.

“We are the link between Africa and the world,” says the Chief Engineer Ferron Hartzerberg.

Jess Auerbach Jahajeeah added further reporting.