The wreck of the COLONIAN lies at the western end of the North Bishop rocks. Its remains have been subject to considerable commercial salvage work since at least the mid-1960s with Risdon Beazley reported to have been awarded the initial contract from the Board of Trade (as was) for the cargo in 1968. Diver reports from 1984 estimated that 90% of the wreck had been physically removed by that point, but that the seabed was still strewn with unexploded shells, fuses, and copper and brass bars. The anchor from the ship was salvaged at this time by St Davids resident Dai Chant, as part of a wider phase of salvage work on the wreck, and is on public display in the city (see NPRN 801276).
Diver reports from 2002 note that its position is 200m SE of the charted position at that time. The vessel was not located in a coherent form by the UKHO during their most recent multibeam survey of the area in 2013, assumed by the UKHO to be because the wreck is largely salvaged.
Event and Historical Information:
The COLONIAN was a steel-hulled screw-steamer built in 1901 at Hebburn, Newcastle by R. Hawthorn & W. Leslie & Co Ltd (Official No. 115222, Yard No. 380). The vessel was 6440gt, 4140nt; 450ft 5in long x 54ft 2in breadth x 30ft 6in length; 3 decks, shelter deck, 7 bulkheads, boat deck 78ft. It was powered by 4 boilers linked to a triple expansion engine producing 552hp. The ship is lilsted in the Lloyds Register as carrying a 4-masted schooner rig, largely for the purposes of self loading/unloading cargo, rather than for propulsion. It is also noted as carrying a wireless set. At time of loss, the vessel was owned by F. Leyland & Co Ltd, Liverpool, and was registered at Liverpool.
On 20 May 1917 the COLONIAN was on passage from Boston, Massachusetts, to London under the command of master J MacDonald with a cargo of copper and brass ingots, brass shell cases and brass fuse heads, when it was wrecked on the North Bishop Rocks. Its cargo manifest as reported in the Lloyds Casualty Reports was flour, grain, etc, rather than munitions and metals. The vessel was designated for salvage work immediately, due to the valuable nature of the cargo, but the vessel slipped off the rocks and sank in deeper water after only a week of work and was not rediscovered until the 1960s.
Sources include:
The Amman Valley Chronicle, 24 May 1917, p.3
Goddard, T, 1983, Pembrokeshire Shipwrecks, p.107
Larn and Larn, 2002. Shipwreck Index of the British Isles. Volume 5, Section 7, West Wales (EG).
Lloyd's Register Casualty Returns, 1 April - 30 June 1917, p.7 (g)
Lloyds Register Documentation, LRF-PUN-W923-0093-R: https://hec.lrfoundation.org.uk/archive-library/ships/colonian-1901/
Lloyds Register of Shipping, 1914-15, No. 1459: https://archive.org/details/HECROS1915ST/page/n243/mode/2up
Receiver of Wreck Droits Database 2007 RCIM6/2/5
UKHO ID 12100: Contains public sector information, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0, from UK Hydrographic Office.
https://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?10416
J. Whitewright, RCAHMW, January 2025
This record was enhanced in 2020 with funding from Lloyd's Register Foundation as part of the project ‘Making the Link: Lloyd's Register and the National Monuments Record of Wales’. Visit Lloyd’s Register Foundation Heritage and Education Centre for more resources.