Monarch IV

[shipstamps]

One of the best-designed ship stamps I (E Argyle) have seen for some time was issued by the State of Sharjah to commemorate the International Telecommunications Union centenary. The British printers of this stamp, Harrison and Sons, Ltd., are to be congratulated on a first-class job. Below the map showing the trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific cables and their overland link-ups is the well-known G.P.O. cable ship Monarch, which has an overall length of 483 ft. 7 ins., a breadth of 55 ft. 8 ins and summer draft of 27 ft. 10 ins. Her gross tonnage is 8,056 and she has a summer deadweight of 8,778 tons.
Built and engined by Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson, Ltd., Wailsend-on-Tyne in 1946, she is owned by Her Majesty's Postmaster-General and carries a complement of 136. Flagship of the G.P.O. cable fleet, the Monarch is the fourth ship in the service to bear the name. She is designed to carry nearly 3,000 miles of submarine cable, coiled in four large cylindrical tanks, each 41 ft. in diameter, having a total volume of 125,000 cub. ft.
In January 1948 the Monarch laid the cable between Aldeburgh, Suffolk and Domburg, on the island of Walcheren, Holland. It was a new type of coaxial cable, the first of its type in the world to be laid for commercial use, embodying features not then employed in any other submarine cable. It allowed for 84 simultaneous telephone conversations on the one conductor.
During 1950-51 the Monarch was on charter for no less than 278 days during which time she laid the Dutch-Danish telephone cables and other cables in the area. In 1952 she was dollar-earning, laying four cables in United States waters, each 60 miles long and 1,000 tons in weight, for the Bell laboratories.
On July 30, 1955, the Monarch left Erith, on the Thames, where she had been taking cable on board at the rate of 100 miles a day, to complete the first half of the £15 mn. trans-Atlantic telephone cable system. Previously telephone communication between Britain and America was by radio¬telephone service. By August 18, the ship had completed the laying of the 1,300 mile deep water section, from a point 200 miles N.W. of Newfoundland to Rockall Bank, 330 miles from the Scottish coast, the longest submarine telephone cable to have been laid in one operation and the first to cross the deepest part of the Atlantic.
A month later, after a return to port for re-stocking with cable, she completed the task on September 26, when the final splice was made on board the ship. This part of the task took some 12 hours, after which the join was tested by X-ray. A 3-in armour cable was then lowered overboard and for the first time Britain and Newfoundland were linked by submarine telephone cable. The second cable across the Atlantic was completed towards the end of 1956.
The Monarch was one of the cable ships engaged in the trans-Pacific telephone cable link-up, other vessels engaged being those of Cable and Wireless, Ltd. Thanks to the magnificent work of the Monarch and the other cable-layers engaged in the operation we can now talk to our relatives and friends in Canada, the U.S.A., New Zealand and Australia by telephone. Their work has made the world a much closer-knit community.

Sea Breezes 4/66

Sharjah SG166 170 Guinea-Bissau SG779 (wrongly identified by Gibbons)

[aukepalmhof]

Sold in 1970 to Cable & Wireless Ltd., London and after a refit in Immingham, U.K. renamed in SENTINEL.
1977 Sold for breaking up by Hughes Bolckow Ltd., Blyth where she arrived on 25 October 1977.

source: Watercraft Philately and http://www.miramarshipindex.org.nz