Scotland to Nova Scotia for Britain's General Post Office (GPO). Repeaters When coaxial cables were introduced as submarine cables, a new issue with cable-laying was encountered. These cables had periodic repeaters inline with the cable and powered through it. Repeaters overcame significant transmission problems on submarine cables. The difficulty with laying repeaters is that there is a bulge where they are spliced in to the cable and this causes problems passing through the sheave. British ships, such as HMTS Monarch and HMTS Alert solved the problem by providing a trough for the repeater to bypass the sheave. A rope connected in parallel to the repeater went through the sheave which pulled the cable back in to the sheave after the repeater had passed. It was normally necessary for the ship to slow down while the repeater was being laid. American ships, for a time, tried using flexible repeaters which passed through the sheave. However, by the 1960s they were also using rigid repeaters similar to the British system. Another issue with coaxial repeaters is that they are much heavier than the cable. To ensure that they sink at the same rate as the cable (which can take some time to reach the bottom) and keep the cable straight, the repeaters are fitted with parachutes. List of cable ships Goliath, the first ship to lay an ocean cable in 1850. Done for the Submarine Telegraph Company across the English Channel. CS Monarch (1830), first ship to be permanently fitted out as a cable ship , worked as a cable ship from 1865 to 1870 CS Hooper, launched 29 March 1873 for Hooper's Telegraph Works, first cable ship designed to lay trans Atlantic cable, renamed CS Silvertown in 1881 CS H. C. Oersted, named for Hans Christian Ørsted built for The Great Northern Telegraph Company 1872, was the first ship specifically designed for cable repair. CS Seine, maiden voyage 1873 CS Faraday, built in 1874 for Siemens Brothers , the first cable ship ever to be sunk; she was rammed by another ship in the 1870s while laying a cable for the Brazilian Submarine Telegraph Company. , chartered by Siemens Brothers Ltd. from W.T. Henley’s Telegraph Works Co. to lay cable between Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Chuy, Uruguay to complete work after sunk. Foundered 29 November 1874 in the Bay of Biscay with loss of 58 crew and the cable. CS