Philatelic document - Cable ship

Cable ship More than 99% of the world's Internet traffic travels along the seabed via fiber-optic submarine telecommunications cables, some of which are thousands of kilometers long. At the end of 2025, the TeleGeography website counted 570 in service and 81 planned. These cables are the heirs of the old telegraph lines, then telephone lines, laid on the ocean floor after the invention of Morse code in 1837. In 1851, the first cable link was established between France (Calais) and England (Dover). In 1858, the United States and Europe were linked for the first time. For the colonial and maritime powers of the time, the submarine telecom cable became a strategic infrastructure. In 1863, France set up the first electro-semaphore submarine cable service in Toulon. It was equipped with a ship purchased from England: the Dix-Décembre, a steamer converted into a cable-laying vessel, renamed Ampère (the first of its name) in 1870. She remained in service until 1925. Twenty-five other French cable-laying ships followed, thirteen of which are still in service. Six are operated by Orange Marine, the telecom operator's subsidiary, and seven by Louis-Dreyfus Armateurs on behalf of Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), a fiber optic cable manufacturer nationalized by the French state in 2024. Created with expansion and sovereignty in mind - the cable ships have their own blue, white and red flag, adorned with three golden lightning bolts, a star and a naval anchor - the French fleet is today vital to the smooth running of the global Internet. It accounts for around a third of the total number of cable-laying vessels in the world, making it possible to intervene in virtually any sea to repair a damaged or severed cable in a matter of days.

Timbre-poste (Héliogravure) : Création Raphaële Goineau D'après Photos © Orange Marine Création et mise en page du document philatélique et création du timbre à date : Raphaële Goineau Texte : Olivier Pinaud