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

The Central & South American Telegraph Company
by Bill Glover

CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICAN TELEGRAPH COMPANY

In 1875 James Scrymser left the International Ocean Telegraph Company to form two new telegraph companies. The second of these was the Central and South American Telegraph Company which came into being in 1881.

The India Rubber, Gutta Percha and Telegraph Works Ltd were awarded a contract to manufacture and lay a cable from Mexico to Peru. The route was: Tehuantepec, Mexico - La Libertad, El Salvador - San Juan de Sur, Nicaragua - Puntarenas, Costa Rica - Balboa, Panama - Buenaventura, Colombia - Santa Elena, Ecuador - Payta, Peru. CS Silvertown laid the majority with CS Retriever (1) laying the remainder. A connection was made to the Mexican Telegraph Company system via a land line across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to Coatzacoalcos and then a cable to Vera Cruz. The whole system opened for service in 1882.

In 1890 an extension to the system took place with the laying of a cable Chorillos - Iquique - Valparaiso. The same company manufactured and laid the cable using CS Silvertown. In the same year the company purchased a land line giving them connections to Santiago, Buenos Aires and Montevideo.

In 1891 the company took delivery of CS Relay and used it to lay cables from Tehuantepec to San Jose, Guatemala and San Jose to La Libertad. Two years after this CS Silvertown duplicated the cable from Tehuantepec to Chorillos this time with landings at San Juan and Santa Elena only.

In 1906 Siemens Bros were awarded a contract to manufacture and lay a cable from Valparaiso to Chorillos with a landing at Iqique with CS Faraday (1) carrying out the laying. The following year Telcon manufactured and laid a cable from New York to Cuba and then Panama using CS Colonia.

This cable was duplicated in 1915 with the same company and cable ship carrying out the work.

CS Stephan laid a cable manufactured by Norddeutsche Seekabelwerke between Balboa, Panama and Santa Elena, Ecuador in 1913. This was the final cable laid under this name; in 1920 the company changed its name to All America Cables.

CABLE SHIPS

RELAY

Built in 1890 by R. Thompson and Son, Sunderland

Length 240.0 ft. Breadth 32.2 ft. Depth 14.2 ft. Gross tonnage 1198

Built for the Central and South American Telegraph Company and used primarily for repair work, but did on occasions lay short cables.

Transferred to All America Cables in February 1920 and remained in service until 1932 when sold to the Dutch East Indies Exploring Company, Nevada. Sold to a Chinese company in 1937 and renamed Elli. Wrecked in 1940 but salvaged and renamed Bjornefjell. Changed hands again in 1947 and was then renamed Bota. Finally renamed Finn in 1948, keeping this name until scrapped in 1952.

(see photo of Relay, misidentified as Riley, in the 1898 article Submarine Cable Laying).

GUARDIAN

Built in 1907 by Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson Ltd. Newcastle upon Tyne.

Built for the Central and South American Telegraph Company and used primarily for repair. Transferred to All America Cables in February 1920 and based on the west coast of South America on cable maintenance. Sold to the United Fruit Company in 1940 but retained the name Guardian. Sold in 1946 to the Caribbean Atlantic Shipping Corporation and renamed Ceibar. Sold again in 1948 this time to Ships and Vessels Ltd., Israel, again with a name change to Theodore Herzel. Sold for scrap in 1951.

For an interesting family history connected with the Barranco, Peru, office of the
Central & South American Telegraph Company, see the story of Charles Henry Baker.

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