Shipwrecks in the Sound of Mull
THE SOUND of Mull is littered with shipwrecks; some well known, others not so and many yet to be rediscovered.
Considering the number we know of - at least 16 - one might well think that a clan of Highland sirens inhabit its numerous points and headlands and are constantly luring seamen ashore to death and ruin.
The Inniemore Islands, sometimes shown on charts and maps as ‘Eilean Rubha an Ridrie’ lying at the southerly entrance to the Sound, have been the scene of many a maritime mishap over the centuries.
No less than seven vessels are known to have been either wrecked on them or driven ashore in the vicinity, including one only a few weeks ago which is now safely tied up in Oban Bay. Presumably strong currents, fickle winds and swirling tides are to blame rather than mythical females.
The earliest and by far the most important on record, is HMS Dartmouth, a Royal Naval, 22-gun, fifth rate vessel of the 17th century engaged in anti-Jacobite activities in the area.
Dragging her anchor in a violent storm from Scallastle Bay on the evening of October 9, 1690, the Dartmouth struck the north west side of the islands stern first and at least partially capsized and foundered with the loss of 124 lives.
Although tales of a ship going down in the area, under the command of a Captain Pottinger, appeared in local tradition, it was not until 1973 that the Dartmouth was located and positively identified. Admiralty records showed that she was, indeed, captained by a man called Edward Pottinger who, not long before the mishap, had sent a message to his superiors in London complaining that the ship’s anchor ropes were weak and required replacing.
Hopefully the unfortunate man was exonerated in absentia at the subsequent enquiry. The site of the Dartmouth was subject to an extensive archaeological survey in the 1970s under the direction of well-known marine archaeologist, Professor Colin Martin of the University of St Andrews and Kirk Brae, Lochaline.
Later, whole sections of the Dartmouth’s wooden hull and many other artefacts, including navigational and surgical instruments, several guns and cast iron hand grenades still with their gunpowder and beech wood plugs, were lifted from the sea bottom.
A small part of the collection can be seen in the Tower Museum in Londonderry.
Other pieces will eventually be on view in the National Museum of Scotland after they have been cleaned and preserved. Almost exactly on the spot where the Dartmouth was shattered against the rocky shore, two other vessels foundered.
The first was carrying a cargo of coal. Little is known about her other than she is thought to have gone down in the late 1940s.
In February 1973, the Ballista, owned by the Elliot Diving Company, anchored close by with the intention of lifting her cargo. A terrific storm rose during the night causing the Ballista’s stern ropes to snap and she came ashore immediately above the wreck her divers and been salvaging the day before. Parts of her superstructure still appears at low water on spring tides.
Other vessels which lie not far away are: an unnamed Spanish vessel, a sister ship to the one that was blown up in Tobermory Bay in 1588. The salvors working on the Tobermory wreck in 1909 searched but failed to find her; the Onyx, a wooden schooner from Porthmadog in North Wales carrying a cargo of potatoes from Beauly to the Mumbles near Swansea, struck a nearby reef, probably the same one which claimed the St Apollo a few weeks ago, and went down off Rubha an Ridrie in February 1861. Her mast heads were visible for sometime above water at low springs; the Thesis, an iron steamship belonging to David Grainger of Belfast, left her home port on 15 October, 1889 with a cargo of iron ore and a crew of 12 bound to Middlesbrough. Not long after entering the Sound of Mull a thick fog descended and she struck the dreaded Rubha an Ridrie reef and sank some four hours later near an inlet on the Morvern shore.
All her crew got off safely.
In the days before wireless telegraphy and radar, many stricken ships were left to the mercy of the elements and relied almost entirely on help from passing vessels.
There had been an undersea telegraph cable from Oban to Mull, Lochaline and Coll as early as 1890 but, as the cable was constantly being damaged by the elements, it was unreliable.
In 1905 it was replaced by a Marconi wireless system by which messages could be passed up and down the Sound through a series of towers at Lochaline, Achnacraig and Tobermory.
I heard an amusing story from the late John Campbell, Bunessan, about an old man from the Ross of Mull who was visiting some of his friends in Tobermory not long after the Post Office built the wireless mast above the town.
On leaving a local hostelry and not having seen anything like it before, he asked what it was. ‘That’s the Marconi tree’, he was told, ‘and what kind of fruit does it produce? ‘Electric currents,’ was the pithy response!
Iain Thornber iain.thornber@btinternet.com