In the early hours of 7 September 1838, Grace, looking from an upstairs window of the Longstone Lighthouse on the Farne Islands, spotted the paddlebox (the only remaining piece of wreckage) and 13 survivors of the ship, SS Forfarshire on [Big Harcar], a nearby low rocky island. The Forefarshire had foundered on the rocks, broken in half and sunk during the night. She and her father, William Darling, determined that the weather was too rough for the lifeboat to put out from Seahouses and so they took a rowing boat (21 ft, 4 man Northumberland Coble) across to the survivors taking a long route that kept to the lee side of the islands, a distance of about half a mile, Grace kept the coble steady in the water while her father helped 4 men and the lone surviving woman, Mrs. Dawson into the boat. Although they had survived the sinking, Mrs Dawson had lost her two young sons during the night. Her father with 3 of the rescued men then rowed back to the light house while Grace and the fourth man comforted Mrs. Dawson. Grace then remained at the lighthouse while William Darling and three of the rescued Forefarshire crew members rowed back and recovered the remaing survivors. Meanwhile the lifeboat had set out from Seahouses but diverted to the lighthouse when it was seen that the rescue had been completed by Grace and her father. The weather deteriorated to the extent that everyone was obliged to remain at the lighthouse for three days before returning to shore.
The Forfarshire had been carrying 31 passengers and 29 crew. The vessel broke in two almost immediately upon impact with the rocks. Those rescued by Grace and her father were from the bow section of the vessel which had been held by the rocks for some time before sinking. It was later discovered that nine other passengers and crew had manged to float off a lifeboat from the stern section before it too sank and that these survivors had been picked up in the night by a passing vessel to be landed at Hull two days later.
Grace Darling died of tuberculosis in 1842. She is buried with her father and mother in a modest grave in St. Aidan’s churchyard, Bamburgh, where a nearby elaborate cenotaph commemorates her life. A plain stone monument to her was erected in St. Cuthbert’s Chapel on Great Farne Island in 1848.
Legacy
Even in her lifetime, Grace’s achievement was celebrated, and she received a large financial reward in addition to the plaudits of the nation. A number of fictionalized depictions propagated the Grace Darling legend, such as Grace Darling, or the Maid of the Isles by Jerrold Vernon (1839), which gave birth to the legend of “the girl with windswept hair”. Her deed was committed to verse by William Wordsworth in his poem Grace Darling (1843). A lifeboat with her name was presented to Holy Island. One of the series of Victorian paintings by William Bell Scott at Wallington Hall in Northumberland depicts her rescue.At Bamburgh there is a museum dedicated to her achievements and the seafaring life of the region.
It was suggested by Richard Armstrong in his 1965 biography Grace Darling: Maid and Myth that she may have suffered from a cleft lip. He is the only biographer to put forward this theory, which has been strongly disputed by other experts.
The Royal National Lifeboat Institution Mersey class lifeboat at Seahouses bears the name Grace Darling.
Singer/songwriter Dave Cousins of the Strawbs wrote Grace Darling (on Ghosts) in tribute and as a love song.
See also
- Grace Bussell, a 16 year old Australian girl who rescued 50 people from the SS Georgette when it foundered off the West Australian coast in 1876. She is regarded as Australia’s national heroine. At the time of the rescue, Bussell was referred to as the “Grace Darling of the West” by journalists.
- Ann Harvey, a Newfoundland 17-year old who in 1828, with her father, brother & dog, rescued 163 shipwrecked people.
- Roberta Boyd, a New Brunswick girl who was hailed as the “Grace Darling of the St. Croix” after a rescue in 1882.
Further reading
- Richard Armstrong - Grace Darling: Maid and Myth (1965)
- Hugh Cunningham - Grace Darling - Victorian Heroine Hambledon: Continuum (2007)ISBN 9781852855482
- Thomasin Darling - Grace Darling, her True Story: from Unpublished Papers in Possession of her Family (1880)
- Thomasin Darling - The Journal of William Darling, Grace Darling's Father (1887)
- Eva Hope - Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands, Her Life and its Lessons Walter Scott (1880)
- Jessica Mitford - Grace Had an English Heart. The Story of Grace Darling, Heroine and Victorian Superstar (1998) ISBN 052524672X
- Constance Smedley - Grace Darling and Her Times Hurst and Blackett (1932)
- H. C. G. Matthew, “Darling, Grace Horsley (1815–1842)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 24 Feb 2007
External links
- Grace Darling Museum from the RNLI
- Grace Darling page on Britain un-Limited
- Description of the sinking of the Forfarshire and Grace Darling’s part in the rescue, from The Tragedy of the Seas, 1841, from Google Book Search
- “Grace Darling: Victorian heroine” BBC
- Grace Darling genealogy
- Grace Darling by William Wordsworth
- Memorial Page for Grace Darling on FindaGrave
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Wednesday July 23, 2008 at 13:52:11 PDT (GMT -0700)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation
Copyright © 2008, Dictionary.com, LLC. All rights reserved.