Bill Wall, Submarine Cable Project Director at LS Cable Systems America, Fort Lee NJ

 William Fergus Wall- 'Bill Wall'

Profession & company: Submarine Cable Project Director at LS Cable Systems America, Fort Lee NJ

How do you celebrate your Irishness? By visiting the Emerald Isle at every opportunity

Name a maritime hero you admire and why? Cyrus W. Field, the founder of the Atlantic Telegraph Company and the financier behind the first Transatlantic submarine telegraph cable in 1858. The first lay utilized two vessels HMS Agamemnon and USS Niagara and the cable only lasted a couple of weeks, just enough time for Queen Victoria to swap messages with President James Buchanan. Field did not give up but then in 1866 commissioned the Great Eastern, built by IK Brunel, the largest vessel in the world, to lay a new Trans-Atlantic cable which was a success and laid the groundwork for the current world-wide fiber optic submarine cable network interconnecting the global community. 

What did you learn in your first job, which has been useful to you throughout the career? To keep a reference file on lessons-learned from previous projects and take note of field-proven methodologies.

Biography: Having joined his first Cable Ship (CS Edward Wilshaw) in January 1974 in Singapore at age 21, Bill Wall has over 50 years of worldwide offshore marine operations experience specializing in submarine cables (Power & Telecom). He is currently the Project Director at LS Cable Systems America (LSCSA) in Fort Lee NJ. LSCSA is a leading supplier of HV submarine power cable to the utility market. Bill’s father was from the Townland of Inch in East Cork and as a child Bill spent all his summers on his uncle’s farm in Cork. Bill lives in NJ with his wife Bernadette & Son Liam.