Thanks, Neil. That's interesting. I take your point about newspapers not always being completely reliable and I'm sure, in the 200 years of their archive (1785-1985), The Times is no exception. Not sure about this one though.
Newspapers aside, the book "Dictionary Of Disasters At Sea" by Charles Hocking has it as just EXMOUTH:
http://perso.orange.fr/cdasm.56/dictionnaire/235.pdf
http://perso.orange.fr/cdasm.56/dico.htm
Have you used Amazon's "Search Inside Books" option? It allows you to search the millions of pages of the books they sell and then view the page where the references occur, as well as up to two pages before and two after. When I search on EXMOUTH ISLAY, it returns the following mentions in books:
In "Adventurers and Exiles: The Great Scottish Exodus" by Marjory Harper, p.212:
"Lurid emigrant shipwreck was grist to the mill of many Victorian newspapers and journals. Between 1847 and 1851, forty-four ships were wrecked on the transatlantic crossing and 1,043 people were drowned, including 248 who died in 1847 when the Exmouth was driven ashore on the coast of Islay shortly after leaving Londonderry for Quebec."
In "Canada in the 1840s: The Nation's Illustrated Diary" by Royce G. Tennant there are two accounts of the loss of Exmouth 1847, p.129, p.131 and, as it happens, an illustration of the "Wreck of the Exmouth Emigrant Ship" on p.132 (not the ship but the wreckage).
On the back cover of "Caran An-t-saoghail (The Wiles of the World): An Anthology of Nineteenth-century Gaelic Verse" by Donald E. Meek:
" ... Irish emigrants, was wrecked on Islay with the loss of all passengers on 28 April of that year. According to Moir and Crawford 1994: 78, `the ship [called the Exmouth Castle in this source ... "
Frustratingly, for some reason, the Amazon Search Inside pages would not display the page for this one so currently unable to get the full text, which is a pity (I reported it to Amazon so they may fix it).
Google Books also allows searching of books and peeking at pages. A search for EXMOUTH ISLAY 1847 returns a number of results:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?lr=&q=EXMOUTH+ISLAY+1847&btnG=Search+Books
Whereas one for "EXMOUTH CASTLE" returns just six and none apparently related to the tragedy:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?lr=&q="EXMOUTH+CASTLE"&btnG=Search+Books
Getting back to The Times, I did some further searching to see if I could locate anything on the building or launching of the ship in 1818 but didn't find anything for that particular year. However, just to throw the cat amongst the pigeons, I did find this in the following year:
The Times, Oct 04, 1819
Emigration to America.- Captain Barrett, of the
brig Lord Exmouth, of Plymouth, who arrived at Ports-
mouth on Sunday last, from Quebec, states..
Perhaps the only way it could be confirmed one way or the other, though, would be to find the name in primary sources in archives somewhere.
regards,
Martin