The wooden ship Norval was launched from the Dumbarton yard of Archibald MacMillan and Son (Yard No 120) on 9th July 1864. She measured 161.8′ x 30.8′ x 19.5′ and her tonnage was 679 gross tons. Built for Mr Walter Grieve of Greenock she was registered in Greenock on 8th August 1864.
Extract from Lloyd’s Register.
The Norval, inward bound from Montreal to Glasgow under the command of Captain Taylor with a cargo of deals, battens and staves, ran aground in fog on the southerly tip of Sheep Island near Easdale in the early hours of the morning of 20th December, 1870. Almost immediately it was obvious that she would become a total wreck although her crew safely disembarked and she did not break up until two weeks later. The rocks off Rubha Sassunaich are well formed to trap and destroy a wooden sailing ship like the Norval. She jammed, port side towards the shore between the small reef lying beneath the surface a few yards off shore and the jagged rocks of the island itself.
Work started immediately to offload the cargo before she broke up but the exposed position of the wreck and the continual pounding from the swell soon began to take their toll and, by the end of the following week, it was reported that her deck was strained and started and raised three feet above normal level. Large rocks had penetrated her hull at various points, much of the copper sheathing on her hull was already torn off and all her masts were down. The salvors were in fact lucky to get a period of relatively calm weather at this time of year and had managed to remove much of her cargo when, on New Years Eve, a storm blew in and, by the morning, she had disappeared leaving her remaining cargo to float off across the Firth where it was picked up by local smacks to be returned to the salvors.
As would be expected there is very little left of this wooden ship but scattered along the narrow rocky gully round Rubha Sasunnaich, Insh Island ( Sheep Island was the traditional name for the island now called Insh ) are the remains of the Norval. She lies in 56° 18.459’N, 005° 40.498’W in depths between 5 and 12 metres. To the west the gully slopes down to 10 metres with copper pins and sheathing to be found among the rocks with a lot of concretion on the bottom of the gully. At the far end of the gully in this direction an anchor chain stretches out to the north west. To the east the gully runs in front of a small rocky islet and slopes steeply from 5 metres to 15 metres. In this part of the gully there are more copper pins and sheathing, piles of chains and a small cast cannon which has subsequently been removed.
Despite the lack of significant remains this is still an interesting dive with the encrusted wreckage and the rock formation of the gully itself combining to make an unusual dive site. In anything other than ideal conditions the swell that pounds this exposed island would make diving in the narrow gully dangerous.
Signal cannon recovered from Wreck.
