Escher.gif (426 bytes)

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

CS George Ward
by Bill Glover

CS GEORGE WARD

Built in 1898 by Laird Brothers, Birkenhead.

Length 251.0 ft.  Breadth 34.8 ft.  Depth 18.7 ft.  Gross tonnage 1608

Built for Prince Albert of Monaco, and named Princess Alice II, and used by him for Oceanographic research. Sold in 1902 to Lord Inverclyde who used it as his private yacht; he renamed the vessel Beryl. Sold by him to the Commercial Cable Company in 1921, the company having the vessel converted to a cable repair ship, to be based at Plymouth.

Fitted with two cable tanks with a combined capacity of 10,000 cubic feet and both having inner and outer sections. A single combined paying out-picking up machine was installed on the forward well deck between the foremast and bridge. Three bow sheaves were also fitted as was a new forecastle. Following the conversion the vessel was renamed George Ward, after a former Vice President and General Manager, George G. Ward. Sold for breaking up in 1923.


Cableships Index Page

Last revised: 12 March, 2013

Return to Atlantic Cable main page

Search all pages on the Atlantic Cable site:

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: [email protected]

—Bill Burns, publisher and webmaster: Atlantic-Cable.com