ARIEL
Built 1939, Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson Ltd
Length 251.6 ft. Breadth 35.25 ft. Depth 16.3 ft. Gross tonnage 1479
Twin screws. Triple expansion engines of 1,400 i.h.p. speed 12 knots.
Owned by the GPO. Built primarily as a cable repair ship. But also used to lay short cables. Sold in 1976 when replaced by CS MONARCH (5)
CABLE WORK
1940 Jersey - Pirou
UK - Guernsey
1953 Holyhead - Dolymount cable. Installed two repeaters
1954 Sicily - Malta
Lowestoft - Scheveningen (Two cables)
1958 Bournemouth - Jersey
1960 Marske - Gothenberg shore ends
1961 CANTAT 1 UK shore ends
1962 Colwyn Bay - Isle of Man
1973 CANTAT 2 UK shore ends
The first of six cable ships built to the same design: two for the GPO, the other being HMTS Iris (2); and four for the Admiralty. Used for cable repair work in British and Continental waters. Fitted with three tanks with a capacity of 16110 cubic feet equivalent to about 700 tons of telegraph cable. Double combined picking up-paying out machinery was supplied by Johnson & Phillips along with two 3 ft 6 in diameter flat bow sheaves. Two swinging davits were fitted originally but these were later replaced with a bow gantry for handling rigid repeaters.
"Bill Glover/Atlantic-Cable.com Website"
http://atlantic-cable.com/stamps/index.htm
Qatar 1971 SG356