page_title: Geoffrey Rothe Clarke
section_title: Career in British Industry and during World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Geoffrey Rothe Clarke / Career in British Industry and during World War II
caption_attribution_description: English: A section of Pluto pipe successively stripped away
context_page_description: Sir Geoffrey Rothe Clarke was a senior civil servant in British India from 1903 to 1925, and thereafter a leading member of British industry until his death, including during World War II.
context_section_description: After retirement from Imperial Service in 1926, Clarke became a director on the boards of P&O, British-India Steam Navigation Company and the Anglo-Iranian oil companies, and in 1934 became chairman of The Calcutta Tramways Company.
  On 1 January 1926, Clarke was employed by the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company (Telcon) as joint managing director. Although the firm had just received a large order to manufacture and lay a new 3500 nautical mile telegraph cable under the Pacific Ocean, its future was challenged by competition from short-wave radio and the economic depression of the early 1930s. In 1932, he was appointed sole Managing Director, reorganising and concentrating production facilities.  Commercial prospects for the company improved when the product base was broadened to include the manufacture of power cables, high frequency cables and magnetic alloys. Clarke was largely responsible for the decision in 1935 to lay the first transatlantic telephone cable. In the same year, the Company's submarine interests were amalgamated with Siemens Brothers on an equal basis by the formation of Submarine Cables Ltd.
  As president of the Association of British Chambers of Commerce from 1936, Clarke made an analysis of the effect of the newly started rearmament program on the structure of British Industry. In 1938, he became a member of the Commonwealth Economic Committee, and of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's Advisory Panel of Industrialists on Rearmament. None of the members received payment for their services, but they caused considerable interest from the Americans who anticipated large contracts. Clarke was deputy chairman (1929–31), chairman (1931-1934), and president of the London Chamber of Commerce (1940-1943). He was President of the Associated Chambers of Commerce of Great Britain (1936-1939) and a member of The Council of Foreign Bondholders.
  With his background knowledge of underwater cabling manufacture, Clarke become a member of a British government committee charged with solving the problem of supplying the advancing Allied forces with petrol, while avoiding enemy attack and adverse weather.  The answer was the Operation Pluto  project, initiated by Lord Mountbatten in 1942.  In great secrecy, the committee coordinated the design and manufacture of several hundred miles of flexible pressure resistant piping, through which petrol could be pumped and transported across the English Channel. The pipes were wound in enormous coils called "Conundrums" after their shape, and laid by specially adapted ships.  Between August 1944 and May 1945, over 172 million gallons of petrol were delivered to allied forces in France through the PLUTO pipes.
  Clarke, who rarely took holidays, retired from his business activities and other interests when forced to do by ill health shortly before his death.
caption: A section of Pluto pipe successively stripped away to reveal the series of layers
exif: {}