Unable to mount the ext3 filesystem without loading the journal ('noload' mount option)

Issue

When mounting and ext3 filesystem with the noload mount option the mount will fail with the following error:

# mount -t ext3 -o noload /dev/device /mnt
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/device,
       missing codepage or other error
       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail  or so

Checking with dmesg | tail shows some more details:

ext3: No journal on filesystem on /dev/device

or

EXT3-fs (device): error: no journal found. mounting ext3 over ext2?