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The Narbonne Brooch is a monogram in pearls on gold. It was made for Janet Turner, a relative of my grandmother, when in 1903 she performed the naming ceremony for the Narbonne SS, a coastal steamer built at the Irvine Shipyard, in Ayrshire, Scotland, for the James Moss Shipping Company of Liverpool.
The Narbonne was sold to Nordenfjeldske Damps, Norway, and renamed Tore Jarl SS. On 7th May 1917, she was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine, the Alfred Arnold, off Sumburgh Head in Shetland.
The brooch was given to me by my grandmother, and has always represented to me our family's involvement in ships and the sea. I recently found out the fate of the ship, and find it fascinating to think that a small coaster, built to sail between Liverpool and the Mediterranean at the beginning of a new century, became involved in World War I and ended her days in the cold waters off Shetland.