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

Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson, Ltd.

Based at the Neptune Works, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson, Ltd. built cable ships for many of the world's cable companies.

Swan & Hunter was formed in 1880, and in 1903 merged with Wigham Richardson (founded by John Wigham Richardson as Neptune Works in 1860), to bid for the contract to build the Mauretania for the Cunard company. Their bid was successful, and the new company, Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson Ltd, went on to build the Mauretania and many other ships.

This advertisement for the company, published in the January 1957 special Transatlantic Telephone issue of the Post Office Electrical Engineers' Journal, lists and illustrates the fleet of cable ships built at Neptune Works.

Swan, Hunter is still in business building ships today, but has not worked on any cable ships recently.

Cable ships built by Swan, Hunter

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