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

CS Mackay Bennett
by Bill Glover

CS MACKAY BENNETT AND THE TITANIC

Following the loss of the Titanic in April 1912 the White Star Line chartered four ships, of which two were cable ships, CS Mackay Bennett, owned by the Commercial Cable Company and CS Minia owned by the Anglo American Telegraph Company but operated by Western Union. All those recovered were brought to the Mackay Bennett where if it was possible they were identified and all personal possessions were removed and stored safely.

Those identified as first class passengers were placed in wooden coffins which were stored aft while third class passengers and crew were wrapped in canvas and placed for'rd. In all 328 bodies were recovered including one child. It was thought at the time that this was Gösto Leonard Paulson, the youngest of four sons travelling with their mother Alma Paulson. Of the remainder 119 were buried at sea of which 60 were unidentified and the remaining 209 were taken to Halifax.

The seventy five members of the crew of the Mackay Bennett adopted the child, paying for his funeral and headstone. He was one of forty-four unknown victims buried in the Fairview Lawn Cemetery. Recently attempts to identify some of these victims using DNA was undertaken, but only that of the child succeeded. It was established that he was Eino Viljami Panula aged 13 months, from Finland, one of five children travelling with their mother Marie.

See the Commercial Cable Company page for more information on the Mackay Bennett.

The Encyclopedia Titanica has a transcript of the diary of Frederick Hamilton (Cable Engineer: Mackay Bennett).

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