HMTS Monarch (1915)

HMTS Monarch was a General Post Office cable ship, built in 1883 by David J Dunlop & Co. of Port Glasgow. She was the first cable ship designed specifically for the GPO, a specialist working vessel of 1,122 gross tons, about 73 metres long, fitted with three cable tanks and heavy cable machinery for laying and recovering submarine telegraph cable. She carried a crew of around 74, and even had finely fitted interiors, because apparently Victorian engineers could build a practical cable ship and still find room for walnut panelling.

On 8 September 1915, Monarch was on passage from Santander to Newport with iron ore when she struck a mine laid by the German submarine UC-5, about 2.5 miles south of Folkestone, near the defence boom gate. She sank with frightening speed, reportedly in around three minutes, with three lives lost. The wreck lies upright but dispersed in roughly 21 to 28 metres, with boilers, triple-expansion engine remains, cable gear, pulley wheels, GPO-marked finds and cable-related fittings still giving the site its unmistakable character. For divers, Monarch is a cracking First World War Channel wreck: part industrial archaeology, part wartime casualty, and part underwater museum of the age when Britain’s messages travelled through copper, gutta-percha and optimism.