CS Colonia off Telegraph Construction & Maintenance Company Works, Greenwich

Colonia in St John’s harbour

Colonia at St John’s

Section of chart of St John’s Harbour showing cables at Cuckold Cove.
Image copyright © George White 2004 and used by courtesy of
John Crellin’s Commercial Cable Company website

Large iceberg grounded near northern cable

Icebergs under Cuckold Head

Coiling 62-ton ice cable from ship to lighter
Detail of activity

Making splice on lighter of Cuckold Cove

Lighter in Cuckold Cove,
CS Colonia in distance

Laying shore end of cable to New York

Landing northern shore end (1884 cable) at Cuckold Cove
Details of activity: 1,  2,  3

Cable house, Cuckold Cove

Taut wire gear
Detail of gear

Paying out shore end from lighter at New York

Slipping final splice of New York - St John’s cable. 2 Aug 1909.

Cable house, Coney Island (New York)

Detail of Coney Island cable house

In its issue of August 1st 1909, the New York Times reported the arrival of Colonia from St John’s:

TO LAND NEW CABLE TO-DAY.

Commercial Company Expects to Complete New Line from Ireland.

The new line of the Commercial Cable Company between New York and Ireland will probably be finished to-day, The steamer Colonia, which laid the cable from St. John’s, N. F., yesterday morning took up the end which had been buoyed about 100 miles from the mainland and began preparations for landing it at the east end of Coney Island.

The other cable ship, Cambria, now in New York Harbor, will leave to-day to pick up and mend a cable which now lies broken off Cape Hatteras.

On their way here earlier in the week, both these vessels corrected their chronometers in mid ocean. The time was received by wireless from the Teutonic, and at the office of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, with whose apparatus the boats are equipped, it was said that this feat had never been performed before.