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[farrow]

An interesting old vessel, built for 18month life span and lasted 43 years. Usedheavily in passive sonar and towed array trials, because she ran quieter than a O/P class submarine in quieter routine. An old ship of mine which I had great fun serving in.
Dave

[Bryan Young]

An interesting old vessel, built for 18month life span and lasted 43 years. Usedheavily in passive sonar and towed array trials, because she ran quieter than a O/P class submarine in quieter routine. An old ship of mine which I had great fun serving in.
Dave

A WW2 "Bull"-boat. We seem to have built quite a lot of them. Cableships were "supposed" to be a "non-target" (i.e. neutral) during both wars but that did'nt happen. Even in 1962 the patches over the bullet holes on "Norseman" were evident. But this could have been because all sides were cheating. I think that the original idea of a form of "neutrality" came about because all of the "combatants" cable ships also serviced cables belonging to non-combatant nations....and, believe me, there are (were?) so many cables draped across the oceans that a non-observer would not know which cable was being worked on. I my time working for Cable & Wireless (early '60s) the most interesting "find" was a German cable that had been laid by a very fast ship between Algerceras and Morocco....without detection by the RN. The Russian "trawlers" with sharpened Otter-boards used to play havoc as well.  Apart from the RMAS boats, the last one I saw was tied up in Simonstown (SA), so theirs was still going strong in the early '70s. The silence of a well maintained twin screw steam-recip was awesome....just a gentle "chuff-chuff" (I AM talking about steam engines here). BY.

[farrow]

Most the cabling work the old girl was employed in when Iwas on her from 1982 to 84 was laying listening hydrophones. W hich was one of the main duties in wartime for the RN boats. We laid devises of Gibraltar and in the Helsingfor straits to listen for red herrings. Plus noise ranges up north to trial our subs before they went on patrol.
One of the Bull boats was transfered to the GPO during the war and became the Alert, because the original did not answer a challenge signal from a yank destroyer, when she was putting a shore end in. All the deck officers were killed I believe as they were working at the tme. So the story goes from the old cabling hands I met on her.
Dave

[Bryan Young]

Most the cabling work the old girl was employed in when Iwas on her from 1982 to 84 was laying listening hydrophones. W hich was one of the main duties in wartime for the RN boats. We laid devises of Gibraltar and in the Helsingfor straits to listen for red herrings. Plus noise ranges up north to trial our subs before they went on patrol.
One of the Bull boats was transfered to the GPO during the war and became the Alert, because the original did not answer a challenge signal from a yank destroyer, when she was putting a shore end in. All the deck officers were killed I believe as they were working at the tme. So the story goes from the old cabling hands I met on her.
Dave

I believe it as what you omitted to say was that during certain types of cable operations the deck officers operated from the bows and not the bridge...so they could'nt have either seen or answered a challenge from the trigger-appy brigade. (Whats new!).