In 1854, a U.S. Navy oceanographer named Matthew Fontaine Maury identified an undersea corridor between Ireland and Newfoundland. He called it the "Telegraph Plateau." The plateau turned out to be a myth. The corridor was not.
Over 95% of intercontinental data still travels by submarine cable, and many of those cables follow routes first surveyed for Victorian telegraph lines. The seabed hasn't moved. The hazards haven't relocated. Three-quarters of Northern Hemisphere submarine cables pass through Irish waters today, threading the same needle Maury found 170 years ago.
Geography wrote the playbook once. Every generation since has simply retraced it in faster glass.