Norval Marley

Norval Sinclair Marley (1885–1957) was a White English-Jamaican Marine famous for being the father of the reggae musician Bob Marley.

Born in Jamaica to Albert Thomas Marley, a White Englishman who was from Sussex in England, and Ellen Broomfield, his mother, a White Syrian Jewish Jamaican. He traveled to England where he joined the British Army in August 1916 at Liverpool, enlisting in the Labour Corps (Home Service); he had previously been employed as a Ferro-Concreter in Cuba.

Marley’s future wife Cedella Malcolm (later Cedella Booker) began her romance with Captain Marley, a colonial supervisor, when he was sixty years old and she was merely seventeen. Norval Marley’s family was made up of White English Jamaicans from the parish of Clarendon. He was relocated for work purposes to St. Ann where Cedella had grown up and resided.

She gave birth to their son Robert Nesta (Bob) Marley on 6 February 1945. No other children arose from this relationship. The couple split after a short time. Bob Marley, at his own admission, never really came to know his father.

Bob was about ten years old when Norval Marley died of a heart attack in 1957.