On
7th September 2013 the RNLI commemorated the 175th
anniversary of her involvement in the rescue of survivors from the wrecked
paddle steamer the SS Forfarshire.
Grace
Darling was born on 24th November 1815 in Bambugh,
Northumberland. She was one of 9 children and her father, William Darling
was the keeper of the Longstone Lighthouse. Grace helped her father look
after the lighthouse and also helped him keep watch for ships in trouble
at sea.
So
it was that on the 5th September 1838 the SS
Forfarshire
(above) sailed out of Hull and down the River Humber to the North
Sea with around 60 passengers and crew on board. The SS Forfarshire was a
paddle steamship, built in 1834 at a cost of £20000 for the Dundee and
Hull Steam packet Company by Thomas Adamson of Dundee for weekly return
sailings between the Humber and Dundee on the Tay estuaries. She was a 400
tons vessel, 132 feet in length and 20 feet wide with two paddles, 2 x 90
horse power steam engines and masts and sails and accommodation which
included first class and luxurious state apartments. Apart from passengers
she would have also carried different cargoes such as cloth, soap,
hardware, metal ware and possibly livestock.
After
sailing from Hull on the evening of the 5 September 1838 the ship began to
have trouble with her boilers which started leaking whilst off Flamborough
Head and the problems continued to get worse. The Captain, John Humble,
continued through the 6 September eventually with the
assistance of sail until just after he had reached St Abbs Head, just
north of Berwick on Tweed. In a severe northerly gale the ship’s boilers
and steam engines had then completely failed and drifting southwards using
only sail the Captain tried to get in the lee of the Farne Islands and it
was here that the ship foundered on Big Harcar Rock about a mile from the
Longstone Lighthouse, at around 4.00am on the morning of the 7 September
1838.
Around
7.00am It was from the Longstone Lighthouse (above), that 22 year-old Grace and
her father William set off in stormy seas to rescue the stricken survivors
of the wrecked SS Forfarshire, Grace having spotted survivors on
the rocks while on watch at the lighthouse. The pair rowed out in an open
rowing boat (a coble) to rescue the survivors fearing the local North
Sunderland (Seahouses) lifeboat (with Grace’s brother on the crew) would
not reach the survivors in time. Grace and William rowed for nearly a mile
into the tide and stormy seas. Whilst Grace desperately tried to keep the
coble from smashing on the rocks, her father William got off three men, a
woman (who was holding 2 dead children in her arms) and another injured
man. With her mother, Grace then stayed to look after the survivors whilst
her father and two of the men rescued returned for the other 4 men. With
the conditions they were to stay in the lighthouse for another 3 days
until the storm abated.
What
is less well known about this story is that a 7 man crew of local
fishermen from the North Sunderland lifeboat, with Grace’s brother
William Brooks Darling and three members of the Robson family on board, had also launched
a rescue. In this case they used a local coble, rather than the lifeboat
which they believed would not be able to get close enough to the rocks to
mount a rescue. After a hazardous row in treacherous conditions over
several hours they found no survivors – having reached the location
about 30 minutes after William Darling had rescued the final group of men.
They were astonished to see the survivors when they reached the Longstone
Lighthouse, after seeking shelter when they realised they would not be
able to return safely. They too spent the next three days at the
Lighthouse, whilst their families had no idea of what had happened to
them. They rowed back to the mainland and largely disappeared from
history. That is why, as part of the events held at Seahouses on 7th
September 2013, this element of the story was being recreated by a “Row
to the Farnes” in the historic restored Whitby Lifeboat, the William
Riley. (See below)
For
their bravery the RNLI awarded Grace and her father William the
Institution’s Silver Medal for Gallantry for rescuing nine people
shipwrecked on the rock – making the lighthouse keeper’s daughter the
first woman in history to receive such an award.
Grace became famous
overnight. Her courage captured the imagination of Victorian society and
her story was retold by the ‘media’ of the time and portrayed through
art and poetry. Sadly, three years later Grace died of tuberculosis.
However, her legacy lives on in the RNLI’s Grace Darling Museum in
Bamburgh, Northumberland which features the rescue coble, Grace's dresses,
letters, family belongings and commemorative items.
For
more information about the Grace Darling Museum, which is a free entry
museum, please follow the following link Grace
Darling Museum Bamburgh to get more information about location, opening times and events
|