A shipwreck discovery last summer off Arran, the most southerly of Scotland’s western isles, was followed up with research by the diver who had found the mark – and the Eagle steamship’s cargo of crockery has turned out to star a prized Scottish brand of the 19th century.
Last July Dunoon-based Wreckspeditions was celebrating its seventh year of operation by running an “Arran Techspedition” on its 7m RIB Starfish Enterprise, skippered by Jason Coles. The divers were Adam Bolton, Graeme Bruce, John Eden, organiser of the trip Nathan Messer, Mike Robinson and Martin Sharpe.
The group had initially planned to dive the submarine HMS Sealion but bad weather intervened. Bruce, a retired engineer from Oban and a highly experienced diver, rarely uses charter-boats but had signed up for the trip at the last minute when a friend had been forced to cancel.
“I had research and marks for four new undived sites, so I persuaded Jason to check one set of marks – and we found ss Eagle,” says Bruce, who finds the relief shading feature of Navionics software valuable for finding potential wreck-sites.
The target was a mile from Lamlash Bay at around the 50m mark. “There wasn’t very much of the iron wreck left,” says Bruce, “but it was just littered with pottery.”
A number of the divers had not visited an undived wreck before and Bruce reported hearing “whoops of pleasure” as they went round the site, taking in the large amounts of ceramics and glass in the cargo hold towards the stern. He also managed to find the ship’s ornate bell which, not engraved but topped by an eagle, provided a solid clue to its identity.
Return to the Eagle
The Eagle had been built at Dunbarton on the Clyde, launched in 1857 and was carrying 56 passengers, 20 crew and 200 sheep as its main cargo when, in 1859, she collided with the Pladda, which was under tow at the time. The Eagle, which is thought to have been heading for Northern Ireland, sank with the deaths of 11 people.
Since the discovery of the wreck Bruce has gone on to research the vessel and its cargo, and returned to the site in a bid to catalogue the contents.
Over the course of three dives he and underwater photographer Naomi Watson then brought up a number of items by hand.
After cleaning them, it turned out that most of the crockery retrieved from the holds was of a type produced by J & MP Bell & Co from around 1841, and exported as “Bell’s Pottery”.
The company’s ranges included dinner and tea services that were popular on the UK and American markets but could be found all over the world.
Regarded as Glasgow’s largest and best pottery, the company was at the centre of Scottish ceramics production of the time. Bruce learnt that the Hunterian Art Gallery at the University of Glasgow had a Bell’s Pottery collection, and took examples along for the museum to assess.
Other pottery on the shipwreck, such as the large bowl shown being carried to the surface, was likely have been the sort of vessel used by passengers for washing. “Originally I had assumed it was the Eagle-monogrammed pottery that was significant but it wasn’t – it’s the Bell’s spongeware that is the most important,” says Bruce.
Spongeware makes use of a sponge to stamp patterns onto pottery rather than printing, a technique often combined with hand-painting that originated in Scotland in the 1830s.
Expert Ruth Impey from the Scottish Pottery Society says that she had been surprised by the wide assortment of Bell’s product ranges represented among the artefacts retrieved from the wreck.
“The reason that their pieces are in such good condition is that they were buried in the mud at the bottom of the sea,” she told the BBC. “Graeme had to dive down to 53m to retrieve these items, so that was quite an extraordinary feat in itself.”
The Eagle was not the only new wreck found by Bruce off western Scotland last summer, and at last year’s Guz.tech conference he gave a presentation about finding no fewer than five uncharted wrecks in the space of a month.
Also on Divernet: 10,000 CERAMICS FOUND ON ANCIENT MED SHIPWRECK, 19TH-CENTURY FIZZ IMPRESSES AS DIVERS FIND BALTIC WRECK, ANCHOR & CHEST FOUND AT CHINESE SHIPWRECK SITE, ‘ORDINARY BUT SPECIAL’: RARE FINDS ON PROTECTED WRECK
