For Sale: Vosper voice powered ship's phone pair

[Hans Mulder]

Donated to CMEC for the HMCS Chilliwack display.

I have two Vosper voice powered ship's phones. They are functional. One is painted OD green, the other black, but were battleship grey when I got them. They have been used as my front door bell/intercom system for the last five years and domestic niner has declared them obsolete and surplus.
Connect them with some t-stat four wire and crank the handle to sound the growler and illuminate a notification lamp. One carries a plate marked "underwater weapons handling telephone to squid handling room". When I was a kid I got three of them from a farmers scrap heap and made two functional units - sold the non-functional one on EBAY in 2002 for $500. The black phone is mounted on a nice oak backing board with shelf, the green one on a piece of green painted ply (guess which one was inside and which one outside. Pictures available on request to your email. They are heavy, and bulky, so shipping will probably run about $100 via greyhound in country, and much more internationally. I'm looking for $750 negotiable + shipping via Western Union, EMT, or Paypal. Pickup also can be arranged.

[Hans Mulder]

Ah, forgot the provenance. According to the farmer, the phones came from a relative who was a dockyard worker for the USN sometime in the 60's who was working on decomissioning a WW2 Liberty Ship. However, Vosper is a old British firm so not sure about the connection. Anyways, some of the phones had small slips of paper (parts labels?) inside that read "London Telephone Co" with part #'s etc (they disintegrated when I originally rebuilt the phones so maybe they we a cooperative wartime effort or built under license from Vosper or London Telephone Co?

Research indicates that Squid was a British depth charge mortar used on corvettes, etc, so it is more likely than not that the relative was a Canadian working on a commonwealth ship in Canada and liberated these phones, but the above is the story as told.