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

CS Cambria
by Bill Glover

CS CAMBRIA

Built in 1905 by Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson Ltd.

Length 283.0 ft. Breadth 37.1ft Depth 16.2ft Gross tonnage 1959

Built for the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company Ltd. Sold to the Eastern Telegraph Company in 1912. Chartered shortly after by the Western Telegraph Company for repair and renewal of cables on the east coast of South America. Followed by similar work for the Eastern in the Red Sea and the east coast of Africa during the first World War. In 1919 based at Zanzibar for the maintenance of cables in the area. Severely damaged in a storm, repairs were carried out in Durban and Cambria remained there as repair ship for the St Helena - Cape Town cable.

Put up for sale in 1928, but was taken over by Imperial & International Communications Ltd. in 1929. Transferred to the West Indies in 1930 as repair ship. Refitted in 1935 then carried out renewal work on cables between Montevideo and the Amazon delta. This was followed by a transfer to the Mediterranean and then back to the West Indies and South America.

September 1939 working with CS Lasso, an Admiralty cable ship, on harbour defence work at Dover. Moved to Plymouth as repair ship in the Western Approaches. 1940-41 based at Halifax, Nova Scotia on Atlantic cable duties, returning to the West Indies in 1942, remaining there until the end of the war.

CABLE WORK

See the Cableship Stamps page for more information on Cambria

On the 8th November 1945 while anchored in Montevideo harbour Cambria was hit by the Uruguayan ship Almirante Rodriguez Luis and sank.

CS Cambria after the collision Images courtesy of Gustavo Coll

Gustavo Coll writes:
You will notice that Cambria is still carrying a gun, obviously not having returned to England after the end of the war. Furthermore, from documents in my possession, at the time of sinking there were two gunners on board.

Gustavo Coll, who kindly supplied these photographs of Cambria, has his own telegraph history website, based on his experiences in the cable industry in Uruguay.

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