The Cable Ship Mackay-Bennett was a transatlantic cable-laying and cable-repair ship registered at Lloyd's of London as a Glasgow vessel but owned by the American Commercial Cable Company. She is notable for being the ship that recovered the majority of the bodies after the sinking of the Titanic.
CS Mackay-Bennett around 1900
CS Mackay-Bennett in Dry Dock at Halifax, Nova Scotia
A cable layer or cable ship is a deep-sea vessel designed and used to lay underwater cables for telecommunications, for electric power transmission, military, or other purposes. Cable ships are distinguished by large cable sheaves for guiding cable over bow or stern or both. Bow sheaves, some very large, were characteristic of all cable ships in the past, but newer ships are tending toward having stern sheaves only, as seen in the photo of CS Cable Innovator at the Port of Astoria on this page. The names of cable ships are often preceded by "C.S." as in CS Long Lines.
Modern cable layer CS Cable Innovator docked in Port Angeles, Washington
CS Dependable at Astoria, Oregon, a modern stern sheave design
CS Hooper, the world's first purpose-built cable-laying ship, built by C. Mitchell & Co of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1873, renamed CS Silvertown in 1881
CS Durable was operated by TE Subcom, docked at Keelung port in 2015. This reliance-class ship without bow sheaves.