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

CS Hooker
by Bill Glover

CS HOOKER

Built in 1875 by the London and Glasgow Company

Length 333 ft Breadth 33 ft Depth 24.1 ft Gross tonnage 2000

Launched as the Branksome and then renamed Panama. Owned by the Compania Transatlantica Espanola and operated beteen the West Indies, Cuba and Spain. Captured by the US Cruiser Mangrove during the US-Spanish war. Used by the Army as a troop transport and then converted for cable work by the Morse Shipyard, Brooklyn.

The first and last cable expedition undertaken was to lay cables in the Philippines. Leaving New York the ship had to call in at Gibraltar for boiler repairs. Then through the Suez Canal and on to the Philippines. During the laying of the cable Hooker ran aground on Corregidor Island in Manila Bay and became a total loss. The work was completed by CS Burnside.


Cableships Index Page

Last revised: 11 September, 2011

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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.

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