With accusations of sabotage of pipelines and cables in the news here is a topical wreck of the week. Written by Tanja Watson, Marine Research Specialist at Historic England.

Today marks the 80-year anniversary of the loss of HMTS Monarch (III), a cable repair ship built in 1916 for the General Post Office (GPO) – the institution in charge of the state postal and telecommunications systems between 1870-1969. [1] There are two main types of cable ships: cable repair ships, also known as cable cutters – which tend to be smaller and more manoeuvrable, still capable of laying cable but the primary job is fixing or repairing broken sections of cable; and cable-laying ships – which are wider and designed to lay new cables.

An elegant steamer of single deck construction in steel with two screw-driven, steam turbine 6-cylinder engines, the HMTS Monarch (III) was one of several cable ships built by Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson Ltd at their shipyard in Wallsend, Tyne and Wear. [2] With a crew of 65 – measuring almost 68 metres in length, 10 m in breadth, and 1,150 gross register tons – it was equipped with three cable tanks and various specialist tools and features designed to sever and repair submarine telegraph cables in British waters for the next thirty years. [3]

Several of the early cable repair vessels were called HMTS Alert (I & II) and HMTS Monarch (I – V). This is about the third cable ship to be called the Monarch. The first one, built in 1830 as a passenger and cargo paddle steamer by Pearsons of Thorne for the Hull Steam Packet Company, was converted to a cable ship in 1853 for the Electric Telegraph Company, finishing as coal hulk and later broken up post 1874. The second was built in 1883 by Dunlop & Co, Port Glasgow, for GPO. It was sunk by a mine or torpedo off Folkstone in September 1915. Due to this event, the new vessel was named the Monarch (III). GPO had originally intended to replace the aging HMTS Alert (I), built in 1871 as The Lady Carmichael by A. McMillan & Son of Dumbarton, Scotland, and converted and used as a cable ship between 1890-1915, but the loss of Monarch (II) changed plans. The vessel was wrecked at Redcar (North Yorkshire), refloated and scrapped in 1932. [4]

Cable laying in the 1850s

The first telegraph cable across the English Channel was laid in 1850 by the English Channel Submarine Telegraph Company of Jacob and John Watkins Brett. [5] The following year, the British connected England, Holland, Germany, Denmark and Sweden. Another cable connected Italy with Corsica and Sardinia. By the mid-1850s, a 300-mile cable was laid across the Black Sea, allowing England and France to connect with their armies instantly (the Crimean war). In 1858, after numerous attempts, a telegraph cable was finally laid between Great Britain and North America. [6]

First World War

On 4th August 1914, within an hour of Britain declaring war on Germany, the HMTS Alert (I) was dispatched to cut the German communication cables in the Atlantic Ocean. Other ships would eventually eliminate the remainder of Germany’s cable network, but Germany was now forced to communicate by wireless transmission, which the British could intercept and decrypt. As the BBC describes it, the Alert undertook “one of the first strategic acts of information warfare in the modern world. A few hours later, the Alert had cut off almost all of Germany’s communications with the outside world. It had hit the kill switch.” [7]

Meanwhile, the Monarch (III) carried on with cable repair work around the British Isles throughout the First World War and in between the wars until she was requisitioned (or possibly charted) by the Admiralty in 1939. [8]

Second World War

The British Admiralty requisitioned and equipped at least seventeen cable ships for cable service during the war. [9] HMTS Monarch (III) being one of them, was tasked with providing a telephone connection to France during preparations for Operation Neptune, the naval component of Operation Overlord. [10] In the days and nights following D-Day, the cable ships Monarch (III), under Captain Arthur Troops, and St Margaret’s were used, together with a smaller cable barge, to lay a 160-mile-long telephone cable. [11]

On Tuesday 13^th June 1944, at around 1300 hrs, while the Monarch, equipped with a barrage ballon overhead to discourage air-attack, was being guarded by Trentonian (K368), a Royal Canadian Navy warship, the 1,000-ton Flower-class corvette – a squadron of US warships appeared in the vicinity. On approaching them, one of the American destroyers, USS Plunkett (DD-431), a 1,630-ton Gleaves-class destroyer, tried to contact them, first firing star shells to illuminate the area in the night, but no response was given by the Trentonian, who spotted that they were an ally and believed the signals were coming from German positions on the coast. The Canadians repeatedly flashed their recognition lights. However, these signals were missed by the USS Plunkett who opened fire on the Monarch, hitting the barrage ballon overhead. The Trentonian manoeuvred to make its identification as an Allied warship more visible, but the Americans continued to fire. About a kilometre away, while still desperately sending out messages by radio and signal lamp, the Trentonian finally moved between the Monarch and one of the US destroyers and only then did the firing stop.

The attack lasted about 10 minutes. The Monarch had been hit – the bridge was destroyed, its superstructure and steering damaged. Two of the crew were killed and 30 injured, including Captain Troops who later died from his wounds. The telephone cable the Monarch had been laying was lost over the side, and the Canadians were told not to share the incident with anyone. [12]

The following year both vessels went down by enemy action. The Trentonian was sunk by the U-1004 near Falmouth, Cornwall, in February; and the Monarch was sunk off Orford Ness, a foreland spit on the Suffolk coast, on 16^th April 1945. Two crew members of the cable layer were lost. One of the survivors, Denis Simmons, stated in 2005 that they had been torpedoed on the starboard side by U-2324 (Kapitänleutnant Konstantin von Rapprad) while returning to Felixstowe, having repaired the Suffolk-Netherlands cable. [13] However, according to German sources, the U-2324 did not sink or damage any ships during its 37 day patrol between March and 9 May 1945. [14] Another crewman, Ernest Hunt, Seaman Cable Hand, who served on the Monarch ‘just prior to its sinking’, claims they “were sunk by an acoustic mine off the East Coast whilst returning to Harwich, April 1945”. [15] (A type of naval mine which monitors audio activity in its vicinity).

The wreck lies some 10 miles SE of Orford Ness, on a bed of sand, at a general depth of 30 metres. [16] It sits upright but it is very broken and is draped in marine cable. Giant cable-laying rollers lie at the bows. [17]

The Monarch almost survived the war. On the day it sank, the Allies announced that future operations over Germany would focus on cleanup rather than strategic targets, effectively ending the air war, and that Berlin was now surrounded by the Red Army. [18]

A rare type of vessel

Cable ships have always been a rare sight. In 1892, two-thirds of the world’s submarine cables were owned by Great Britain, yet in 1896, there were only 30 cable ships in the entire world, of which 24 were owned by British companies. The global telegraphic cable network was established around 1900. [19] Today there are roughly 60 cable-laying ships in the world, according to the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC). [20] 99% of the world’s digital communications rely on subsea cables, with a global network of 1.4 million km (870,000 miles) of telecommunication cables on the seafloor. [21] The UK currently has over 70 active telecommunication cable systems, consisting of several hundreds of individual cables, managed by The Crown Estate. [22] All these, and the power cables needed to carry the electricity derived from wind, wave and tidal installations, the renewable energy, ashore – require these specialized types of vessels and remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs) to repair and lay new ones.

Footnotes

[1] HMTS (His Majesty’s Telegraph Ship) was a prefix used for cable ships owned by the British General Post Office (GPO) before they became a public corporation, changing to CS (Cable Ship). 

[2] History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications, Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson, Ltd.

[3] Wrecksite, SS Monarch (III), [subscription required]

[4] History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications, Glover, Bill, CS Lady Carmichael/ HMTS Alert (1)

[5] History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications, 1850 Dover-Calais Cable

[6] Onfray, Robert, The Cable Cutters, 11 August 2023

[7] See note [5]

[8] History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications, Monarch (3)

[9] History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications, Eric Tate and the Admiralty Cable Ships 1944-1947

[10] Kemp, Paul, Friend or Foe: Friendly Fire at Sea 1939-1945, pp. 37–38, Pen and Sword, 1993, ISBN 0850523850.

[11] Mackenzie, Duncan S., PK Porthcurno, Monarch Under Fire

[12] Litwiller, Roger, White Ensign Flying: Corvette HMCS Trentonian, 2014

[13] See note [3]

[14] uboat.net, Kapitänleutnant Konstantin von Rappard

[15] History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications, Glover, Bill, HMTS Monarch (3)

[16] UKHO Wreck Report No. 10253 [subscription required]

[17] See note [3]

[18] History – How Stuff works, World War II Timeline: April 16, 1945-April 26, 1945

[19] Naval Historical Society of Australia, Clifton, Fairlie, Occasional Paper 95: Grandfather was a cableman (18 Nov 2020)

[20] DCD, Swinhoe, Dan, The cable ship capacity crunch (6 Dec 2022)

[21] Minds and Machines, volume 34, issue 3, 2024, Submarine Cables and the Risks to Digital Sovereignty, Volume 34, article number 31

[22] The Crown Estate, Marine: Cables and pipelines