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

CS Edward Wilshaw
by Bill Glover

CS EDWARD WILSHAW

Built in 1949 by Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson Ltd.

Length 313 ft 2 in.
Breadth 41ft 2 in.
Draught 19 ft.
Gross tonnage 2522

Built for Cable and Wireless for cable repair duties. Three tanks were fitted, No 1, 27 ft by 13 ft; No’s 2 & 3, 28 ft by 13 ft, giving a capacity of 18,850 cubic feet of cable.

Three bow sheaves of 3 ft 6 in. diameter were fitted, but no stern sheaves. The bow sheaves were later replaced with ones 6 ft diameter. The cable machinery was fitted on the main deck.

Based at Mombasa, Kenya, during the 1950s. 1965-70 based at Gibraltar, 1970-7 covered Australasian waters, the Pacific Ocean and the West Coast of America.

The Wilshaw was scrapped in 1979

Barry Waterhouse, whose memories of the cable industry may be seen on the Recorder (3) page, joined the Edward Wilshaw in 1955 at Aden, the ship's station being Mombasa at that time, and stayed with her until November 1956 when he returned to the UK.

Pete Edwards' father, Peter Anthony John Edwards, served on the Edward Wilshaw in 1953 as First Mate, and Pete sends this weather reports map from the Wilshaw drawn by his father:

Image courtesy of and copyright © 2006 Pete Edwards

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