History of the Atlantic Cable & Submarine Telegraphy

	History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications from the first submarine cable of 1850 to the worldwide fiber optic network
CS René Descartes by Bill Glover

CS RENE DESCARTES

Built for France Telecom, the 19th cable ship owned by them. Replacement for CS Vercors.

CS René Descartes at Cape Town, CS Chamarel in background
Image courtesy of and copyright © 2010 René Carpentier

Built 2002 by Hanjin Heavy Industries, South Korea.

Length 144.5 m Breadth 22 m Depth 7.40 m Gross tonnage 8208.

Duties: Cable laying, capacity 5500 tonnes.

Cover commemorating the launch of the ship

CS René Descartes at Victoria BC, Canada, August 2015. The cable vessel is dwarfed by the cruise ship Jewel of the Seas at the next berth.
Detail of CS Rene Descartes
Image courtesy of and copyright © 2015 Paul Edwards

In July 2021 CS René Descartes was again at Victoria BC, Canada, moored alongside CS IT Integrity. These photographs are courtesy of Lesley Lewis.

CS René Descartes and CS IT Integrity

CS René Descartes

Last revised: 27 July, 2021

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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.

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