History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications
from the first submarine cable of 1850 to the worldwide fiber optic network

CS Britannia (2)
by Bill Glover

CS BRITANNIA (2)

Built in 1885 by Laird Brothers, Birkenhead

Length 247.2 ft.  Breadth 34.3 ft.  Depth 17.4 ft.  Gross tonnage 1525

The first vessel that Telcon had designed and built as a cable ship, previous vessels being conversions. Fitted with three cable tanks, two forward and one aft, with a total coiling capacity of 18,700 cubic feet. Two separate paying out-picking up machines were fitted on the main deck and a paying out machine was fitted aft on the port side. Twin bow and single stern sheaves were fitted.

CS Britannia (2) was used to assist the larger cable layers such as Colonia and Anglia. Sold to the Eastern Telegraph Company in 1904 and used for 20 years on cable repairs throughout the Eastern network. Relegated to a storage hulk at Zanzibar in 1924.

Research Material Needed

The Atlantic Cable website is non-commercial, and its mission is to make available on line as much information as possible.

You can help - if you have cable material, old or new, please contact me. Cable samples, instruments, documents, brochures, souvenir books, photographs, family stories, all are valuable to researchers and historians.

If you have any cable-related items that you could photograph, copy, scan, loan, or sell, please email me: billb@ftldesign.com