CANTAT-1 was the first Canadian transatlantic telephone cable, between Hampden, Newfoundland and eventually Grosses-Roches, Quebec and Oban, United Kingdom, which followed on from the success of TAT-1. It was conceived and approved as stage one of a proposed commonwealth round the world cable and was done at a cost of $8,500,000. The system was jointly owned by Cable & Wireless and the Canadian Overseas Telecommunication Corporation (COTC).
A cable layer or cable ship is a deep-sea vessel designed and used to lay underwater cables for telecommunications, for electric power transmission, military, or other purposes. Cable ships are distinguished by large cable sheaves for guiding cable over bow or stern or both. Bow sheaves, some very large, were characteristic of all cable ships in the past, but newer ships are tending toward having stern sheaves only, as seen in the photo of CS Cable Innovator at the Port of Astoria on this page. The names of cable ships are often preceded by "C.S." as in CS Long Lines.
The Hooper's Telegraph Works Ltd was established by William Hooper in 1870 to manufacture and lay submarine communications cable using his patented vulcanized rubber core. Before the company was formed to produce finished submarine cable Hooper had furnished core for other companies, particularly that of William Thomas Henley, to armor and sheathe. The original core works were located at Mitcham, London with the later complete cable, core with external sheathing, production located and later consolidated at Millwall and the company renamed Hooper's Telegraph Works.
USS Thor was a cable repair ship that supported Project Caesar, the unclassified name for installation of the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS). Originally the Artemis-class attack cargo ship Vanadis (AKA-49) which was briefly in commission from 9 July 1945 to 27 March 1946, it was converted in 1955 after nine years in the reserve fleet.
CANTAT is an acronym for Canada TransAtlantic Telephone Cable, a series of submarine communications cable systems linking Canada with the U.K. and later Europe. The first cable was a joint venture of Cable & Wireless and the Canadian Overseas Telecommunications Corporation (COTC) implementing national policies to establish a Commonwealth Round the World Cable System. The name has been applied to three systems.
William Thomas Henley (1814–1882) was a pioneer in the manufacture of telegraph cables. He was working as a porter in Cheapside in 1830, leaving after disputes with his employer, and working at the St Katherine Docks for six years. During those years he was determined to learn a trade and used money from an aunt to purchase a lathe, vice and lumber with which he made a work bench. With those tools he taught himself to turn wood and brass and began to experiment, including with electricity.
The second CS Faraday was a cable ship built by Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company, Hebburn-on-Tyne, in 1922–23, as a replacement for the ageing CS Faraday built in 1874. Design of the new ship was influenced by long experience with the original ship.
USNS Albert J. Myer (T-ARC-6) was the second of only two Maritime Commission type S3-S2-BP1 ships built for the US Army near the end of World War II intended to support Army Signal Corps communications cables. She is named for Brig. Gen. Albert J. Myer, the founder of the Signal Corps. The other ship was the William H. G. Bullard, later USS Neptune, which Myer later joined in naval service.
USNS Neptune (ARC-2), was the lead ship in her class of cable repair ships in U.S. Naval service. The ship was built by Pusey & Jones Corp. of Wilmington, Delaware, Hull Number 1108, as the USACS William H. G. Bullard named for Rear Adm. William H. G. Bullard. She was the first of two Maritime Commission type S3-S2-BP1 ships built for the US Army Signal Corps near the end of World War II. The other ship was the Albert J. Myer, which later joined her sister ship in naval service as the USNS Albert J. Myer (T-ARC-6).
USS Aeolus (ARC-3) began service as USS Turandot (AKA-47), an Artemis-class attack cargo ship built by the Walsh-Kaiser Co., Inc. of Providence, Rhode Island. In 1954 she was converted into a cable repair ship to support Project Caesar, the unclassified name for installation of the Sound Surveillance System SOSUS. Aeolus was the first of two ships, the other being USS Thor (ARC-4), to be converted into cable ships. Aeolus performed cable duties for nearly thirty years, from 1955 to 1973 as a commissioned ship and from 1973 until 1985 as the civilian crewed USNS Aeolus (T-ARC-3) of the Military Sealift Command (MSC). The ship was retired in 1985 and sunk as an artificial reef in 1988.
USS Kailua (IX-71) was originally CS Dickenson, a civilian supply and personnel transport cable-repair ship of the Commercial Pacific Cable Company that was based in Honolulu serving the island cable stations at Midway and Fanning Island.
USS Nashawena (AG-142/YAG-35) was a U.S. Navy cable layer constructed during World War II for the Army as the wooden-hulled self-propelled barge BSP 2008. The barge was completed converted to cable work for U.S. Army Signal Corps as the cable ship Col. William. A. Glassford supporting the Alaska Communications System in the shallow island waters of Alaska. She was transferred to the U.S. Navy in 1947 as a miscellaneous auxiliary and assigned to cable-laying duties for the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
HAW-1 was the first submarine telephone cable laid between Hawaii and the mainland United States. HAW-1 was laid in 1957, and consisted of two cables, each transmitting in one direction over 36 channels, with an individual length of 2,625 Nmi (4,862 km). The cable spans between Hanauma Bay, Oahu, Hawaii and Point Arena, California.
AT&T Corporation, commonly referred to as AT&T, an abbreviation for its former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is a subsidiary of AT&T that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agencies.
COMPAC, the Commonwealth Pacific Cable System, was an undersea telephone cable system connecting Canada with New Zealand and Australia. It was completed by closing the last gap in Honolulu Harbor, Hawaii, at 6:25 a.m. B.S.T. on October 10, 1963. Public service of the cable commenced early in December 1963.
C.S. Sovereign is a class DP2 type cable ship used for subsea cable installation and repair works. The ship was designed by BT Marine with Hart Fenton & Company as Naval Architects and built by Van der Giessen de Noord in 1991.
The CS Chamarel, originally CS Vercors was a cable layer owned by France Telecom Marine, laying submarine communications cables around the world. It was built in 1974 and destroyed by a fire in August 2012. As the Vercors, the ship laid cables on and between all continents except Antarctica, including numerous trans-Atlantic cables and the first ever Israeli-made cable, and set the record for the deepest submarine buried cable lay in 2000. The ship was badly damaged by a fire and driven aground on 8 August 2012.
CS Pacific was a cable ship registered in Copenhagen, Denmark owned by the Great Northern Telegraph Company. The steel vessel was built in 1903 in the shipyards of Burmeister & Wain and delivered that year for the purpose of laying and repairing submarine cable in the Far East networks. Historical records of this cable ship are kept in the National Maritime Museum of Denmark. Pictorial records of the ship are available through the DieselHouse interactive initiative.
CS Alert, or HMTS Alert, was a cable-laying ship that had a significant role in World War I. She was launched in 1871 for the Submarine Telegraph Company with the name The Lady Carmichael. In 1890 the ship was acquired by the General Post Office (GPO) as part of the nationalisation of the British telegraph network. At the outbreak of World War I, Alert was immediately dispatched to cut German telegraph cables in the English Channel, seriously damaging Germany's ability to securely communicate with the rest of the world. Alert was taken out of service as a cable ship in 1915 but her cable-handling gear was retained for fitting on her replacement. After the war, she worked as a merchant ship under various names, finally being wrecked at Redcar under the name Norham in 1932.
The India Rubber, Gutta Percha and Telegraph Works Company was a London-based company based in Silvertown, East London. It was founded by Stephen William Silver in March 1864 as Silver's Indiarubber Works and Telegraph Cable Company Ltd. However in July that year the name was changed to the India Rubber, Gutta Percha and Telegraph Works Company.
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