CS ''Telconia'' was a British cable ship used in the early 20th century to lay and repair submarine communications cables. She was built in 1909 by

Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson Swan Hunter, formerly known as Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson, is a shipbuilding design, engineering, and management company, based in Wallsend, Tyne and Wear, England. At its apex, the company represented the combined forces of three powe ...

for the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company (a subsidiary of the

Atlantic Telegraph Company The Atlantic Telegraph Company was a company formed on 6 November 1856 to undertake and exploit a commercial telegraph cable across the Atlantic ocean, the first such telecommunications link. History Cyrus Field, American businessman and fi ...

) and remained in service until late 1934. ''Telconia'' is often incorrectly credited with playing a role in cutting German cables in August 1914. In her book ''The Zimmermann Telegram'', American historian Barbara Tuchman incorrectly asserted this based on an interview with a retired

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by Kingdom of England, English and Kingdom of Scotland, Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were foug ...

officer decades later. Scholars have since determined that in fact it was the British

General Post Office The General Post Office (GPO) was the state mail, postal system and telecommunications carrier of the United Kingdom until 1969. Before the Acts of Union 1707, it was the postal system of the Kingdom of England, established by Charles II of En ...

ship CS ''Alert'' that carried out these attacks. The job of ''Alert'' was to locate and cut the five German cables heading into the Atlantic. A similar operation cut the German cables that connected Great Britain to the German coast. Successive missions by ''Telconia'' and other ships later in the war eliminated the remainder of Germany's cable network and, in some instances, pulled the cables up with their grapples and relaid them into British and French ports for use by the Allied powers instead.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Telconia Cable ships of the United Kingdom World War I auxiliary ships of the United Kingdom 1909 ships Ships built by Swan Hunter Ships built on the River Tyne