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

CS Mercury
by Bill Glover

CS MERCURY

Built 1962 by Cammell Laird & Company, Birkenhead

Length 473.0 ft Breadth 58.7 ft Depth 24.6 ft Gross tonnage 8962

Built for Cable & Wireless specifically to lay the COMPAC and SEACOM cables with HMTS Monarch (4). This was the first cable laying vessel owned by Cable & Wireless or its predecessors. Flagship of the fleet and main cable layer until replaced by Cable Venture. From then on based in the UK for the maintenance of Atlantic cables. Fitted with three tanks with a capacity of 100000 cubic feet or 1100 nm of lightweight cable. Three 10 foot diameter "V" bow sheaves were fitted initially, later replaced with two flat sheaves, and a stern chute was fitted to allow laying of repeaters. Seriously damaged after a fire in the engine room in 1996 while moored at Bristol. Scrapped in 1997.

CABLE WORK

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