SEINE (Cable Ship) 1860

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Built as a passenger paddle vessel under yard No 60E by the Thames Ironworks, Blackwall, U.K. for the Royal mail Steam Packet Co.
02 June 1859 launched as the SEINE.
Tonnage 3.440 gross, 1.928 net, dim. 100.58 x 13.46 x 5.94m., beam over the paddle boxes 20.12m.
One side-lever steam engine 800 nhp., speed 12 knots.
Passenger accommodation for 60 first, 100 second passengers, crew 120.
She was one of the last paddle steamers built for the company.

After delivery used in the liner service between Southampton and the West Indies.
1872 Rebuilt to propeller propulsion, one screw, one funnel.

1876 Sold to the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Co., London, and converted to a cable layer, not renamed.
Fitted out with four cable tanks of 52.297 cubic feet, their dimensions were: Tank one 25 x 12.9ft, tank two 36 x 20ft., tank three 36 x 10ft. and tank four 32.5 x 12.10ft.

On her maiden voyage assisted by the MINIA she laid a cable between Portugal and Madeira. It was the first link in the cable from Portugal to Brazil. The following year the HIBERNIA commenced the continuation to Pernambuco, Brazil on 8 June, five days later she handed over to the SEINE who in turn handed over to the EDINBURG and so to the INVESTIGATOR, which finished the job.
1876/71 Laid the cable between Suez –Aden to Bombay.
1880 The North Atlantic cable.
1883 Used between Vladivostok and Nagasaki and Nagasaki and Shanghai.
1884 Laid the Singapore to Hong Kong cable.
1885 New engines and boilers fitted in, she got now a compound steam engine, 2.250 ihp.
1889 Laid the cable between Sumatra and Australia.
1891 Laid the cable between Madras and Penang.
1895 Chartered by the French company La Societe General des Telephones, and together with the French cable-layer FRANCOIS ARAGO laid the cable from New York to Haiti.
1900 Laid the cable between St Helena and Ascension.
1905 Broken up.

Ascension 1979 15p sg 252, scott 245.
St Helena 25p

Source: Log Book. Merchant Fleets Royal Mail Line & Nelson Line by Duncan Haws.