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Lot Essay
The first undersea cable of any significant length was laid by the steam tug Goliath in 1850 and thus was born the cableship, an entirely new breed of vessel reflecting the entrepreneurial spirit of invention encapsulated in the Victorian Age. Until 1872, those ships engaged in cable-laying had all been converted from existing vessel types, the two most notable being the old sailing battleship H.M.S. Agamemnon and Mr. Brunel's ill-fated liner Great Eastern, both of which had laid the pioneering trans-Atlantic cables. By the turn of the twentieth century however, the specialised cableship had been perfected although conversions were still sometimes necessary as evidenced by the vessel which became known as the Ocean Layer.
Laid down as a Hansa 'B'-hulled merchantman by Flensburger Schiffs in wartime Germany, the shell of the vessel destined to become Ocean Layer was seized as a prize by British forces in May 1945 and eventually completed in situ as the cargo ship Empire Frome in 1948. Owned and operated by the British Government's Ministry of Transport for five years, in 1953 she was sold to Submarine Cables Ltd. who, desperate to replace their cablelayer Faraday sunk in 1941, realized that conversion of another vessel was their easiest option. Thus, Empire Frome was acquired and sent to the yard of R.S. Hayes Ltd. at Pembroke Dock, Wales, from where she emerged as the gleaming new cableship Ocean Layer in 1955. Registered at 4,534 tons gross and measuring 378 feet in length with a 51 foot beam, four huge cable tanks were installed into her hull, two either side of her engines which were situated amidships. These tanks could carry 1,100 nautical miles (n.m.) of coaxial cable or 1,875n.m. of deep-sea telegraph cable, whilst above deck she was equipped with sophisticated bow and stern sheaves, 'Caterpillar' paying-out gear and everything else necessary to enable her to operate successfully.
Ocean Layer's first assignment after conversion was the laying of 67n.m. of coaxial telephone cable between Denmark and Norway after which, under charter to Cable & Wireless Ltd., she laid 1,218n.m. of telegraph cable linking the Brazilian ports of Pernambuco, Bahia and Vitoria. Next employed laying power cables between British Columbia and Vancouver Island (April-October 1956), this was followed by a brief refit that winter prior to spending the first half of 1957 laying the San Francisco to Hawaii coaxial telephone cable in conjunction with C.S. Monarch (shown in the distance in this painting). Subsequent work in the Indian Ocean and again off the Brazilian coast was crowned with the contract to lay a France-Newfoundland transatlantic coaxial telephone cable but, during the course of this project, she caught fire at sea on 14th June 1959. So quickly did the flames spread that the vessel had to be abandoned within forty-five minutes although her crew were picked up by a passing German freighter, the Flavia. Three days later, Ocean Layer was taken in tow by the German salvage tug Wotan which got her safely into Falmouth but where a survey declared her to be a constructive total loss and she was scrapped in Holland the next year.
This fascinating and highly unusual narrative work by Dawson, unrecorded in either of the two standard reference books on the artist, was clearly a special commission in commemoration of the 1957 San Francisco-Hawaii telephone link.
Laid down as a Hansa 'B'-hulled merchantman by Flensburger Schiffs in wartime Germany, the shell of the vessel destined to become Ocean Layer was seized as a prize by British forces in May 1945 and eventually completed in situ as the cargo ship Empire Frome in 1948. Owned and operated by the British Government's Ministry of Transport for five years, in 1953 she was sold to Submarine Cables Ltd. who, desperate to replace their cablelayer Faraday sunk in 1941, realized that conversion of another vessel was their easiest option. Thus, Empire Frome was acquired and sent to the yard of R.S. Hayes Ltd. at Pembroke Dock, Wales, from where she emerged as the gleaming new cableship Ocean Layer in 1955. Registered at 4,534 tons gross and measuring 378 feet in length with a 51 foot beam, four huge cable tanks were installed into her hull, two either side of her engines which were situated amidships. These tanks could carry 1,100 nautical miles (n.m.) of coaxial cable or 1,875n.m. of deep-sea telegraph cable, whilst above deck she was equipped with sophisticated bow and stern sheaves, 'Caterpillar' paying-out gear and everything else necessary to enable her to operate successfully.
Ocean Layer's first assignment after conversion was the laying of 67n.m. of coaxial telephone cable between Denmark and Norway after which, under charter to Cable & Wireless Ltd., she laid 1,218n.m. of telegraph cable linking the Brazilian ports of Pernambuco, Bahia and Vitoria. Next employed laying power cables between British Columbia and Vancouver Island (April-October 1956), this was followed by a brief refit that winter prior to spending the first half of 1957 laying the San Francisco to Hawaii coaxial telephone cable in conjunction with C.S. Monarch (shown in the distance in this painting). Subsequent work in the Indian Ocean and again off the Brazilian coast was crowned with the contract to lay a France-Newfoundland transatlantic coaxial telephone cable but, during the course of this project, she caught fire at sea on 14th June 1959. So quickly did the flames spread that the vessel had to be abandoned within forty-five minutes although her crew were picked up by a passing German freighter, the Flavia. Three days later, Ocean Layer was taken in tow by the German salvage tug Wotan which got her safely into Falmouth but where a survey declared her to be a constructive total loss and she was scrapped in Holland the next year.
This fascinating and highly unusual narrative work by Dawson, unrecorded in either of the two standard reference books on the artist, was clearly a special commission in commemoration of the 1957 San Francisco-Hawaii telephone link.