History of the Atlantic Cable & Submarine Telegraphy

	History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications from the first submarine cable of 1850 to the worldwide fiber optic network
CS Sovereign by Bill Glover

CS SOVEREIGN

CS Sovereign when operated by BT Marine Ltd.

Built in1991 by Van de Giessen de Noord, Netherlands.

Length 127.3 m Breadth 21 m Depth 7 m Gross tonnage 11242

Built for BT Marine Ltd. as a cable layer/repair vessel. Fitted with four tanks with a total capacity of 2800 cubic metres or 6200 tonnes of fibre optic cable. Cable laying via a stern sheave 4 metres in diameter and a 40 tonne 4 metre diameter drum cable engine. Cable repair was undertaken via the bow sheaves and two 40 tonne 4 metre diameter drum cable engines.

When Cable & Wireless (Marine) Ltd. took over the BT cable fleet. ownership of CS Sovereign was assumed by BT Forty Ltd. C&W acted as managers and operators of the vessel. When Global Marine Ltd. took over the C&W cable fleet similar conditions applied.

CS Sovereign at the Global Marine Systems Depot,
Portland Harbour, Dorset
Photo © T.F. Watson 2004

The vessel's main duties are on Atlantic cable maintenance. Her home port is Portland, Dorset.

CABLE WORK

1992	SAT 2 Funchal, Madeira and El Medano, Tenerife - Melkbosstrand, South Africa CS Vercors laid the cable from Melkbosstrand to the first branching unit; CS Sovereign laid the remainder

Last revised: 11 May, 2007

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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