Hornby Cave on the Great Orme is the scene of the shipwreck of the brig 'Hornby' in 1824, when all on board but one perished.
The Hornby, Captain Wade, which sailed from Liverpool on the 27th August for Rio de Janeiro, had been totally wrecked on the rocks of the Great Ormshead and only one person John Williams was saved. The individual so miraculously preserved states, that they were once so far down as far as Point Lynas another at Black Comb, and on Thursday morning at Puffins Island near Anglesea, where, after making a stretch forward to the northward, with the wind N.W or W.N.W
The Captain intended to keep an offing and to run to Liverpol in the morning. They did not think they were so near land until about 10 minutes before she struck. When they percieved it, they were standing in, with a close reefed main topsail, foresail and trysail. He (John Williams) was then ordered out to loose the jib to wear her: when finding himself over a shelf of a rock, he dropped upon it, and seeing no more of the vessel, nor hearing any noise, he supposed she had backed off, and did not know the vessel had gone to pieces till morning, by which time he had managed to reach the top of the cliff, where his story was for some time misbelieved, more from the impossibility they thought there was of his getting up the precipice, than from the way he mentioned being thrown upon a rock.
The cargo was valued at from fifty to sixty thousand pounds, very little of which has been saved:; even the little that has been cast ashore has for the most part been plundered by the country people, hundreds of them flocking to the coast, and carrying off all that could be found.
(Shrewsbury Chronicle, 23 January 1824)
Eight persons have been committed to Caernarfon county gaol, from the neighbourhood of Llandudno, charged with plundering from the wreck of the Hornby, lost on the Great Ormshead.
(shrewsbury Chronicle 5th March 1824)
William Davies of Bryn Llandudno, Charged with plundering the wreck of the Hornby on the 2nd of January 1824, twelve months imprisonment.
John Jones, John Jones, William Davies and John Griffiths charged with ditto, nine months hard labour.
John Roberts, Robert Jones, Owen Owens, Edward Jones and Griffith Griffiths, charged with ditto, six months hard labour.
William Roberts and Robert Williams charged with ditto, discharged on their recognizances of thirty pound each.
(Shrewsbury Chronicle 23rd April 1824)