Who was Grace Darling?
Lifeboat Heroine.
Date and Place of Birth:
24th November 1815, Bamburgh, Northumberland
in her Grandfather's cottage.
Family Background:
Her Grandfather Job Horsley was a gardener to
the Crew Trustees. Grace was the fourth daughter out of nine children
of William Darling Principal Keeper of the Longstone Lighthouse
on the Farne Isles and his wife Thomasin.
St Aidan's Church, Bamburgh (© A Blagg)
Education:
Although her brothers went to the free school
at Bamburgh Castle run by the Crew Trust, Grace did not. There are
some accounts that she went to Bessie Crawford's boarder school
at Spittal, near Berwick-upon-Tweed for a time but this was not
substantiated by Grace, who said she received her education, especially
in Geography, from her father.
Chronology/Biography
of Grace Darling
1815: (Dec): Lived
at the Brownsman Lighthouse in the Farne Islands with her family
where they lived a self-sufficient lifestyle keeping their own livestock.
1824: Trinity House
take over as sole lighthouse authority.
1826: (15th February)
Moved to the newly built Longstone Lighthouse when Grace was ten
but still had to tend their livestock and gardens on Brownsman which
was difficult in bad weather. This light was further out to sea
to protect shipping from the hazardous series of rocks and small
islands.
1834: First launching
of the 150 ton steamship "Forfarshire" at Dundee.
1838: (7th September)
At 4 a.m. the steamship "Forfarshire", on route
from Hull to Dundee with a cargo of cloths and hardware, struck
the rocks on Big Harcar (Then known as Harker's rock) and broke
in two. The boilers had earlier leaked and the engines finally gave
up leaving the vessel to drift southwards towards the shore in a
howling gale.
At quarter to 5 in the morning Grace spotted the stricken ship from
her window. It was not until 7 that she and her father spotted survivors
on the reef. Her father (52) and herself (22) decided to set out
in the family cobble boat to help as they feared that the lifeboats
from nearby Bamburgh or North Sunderland would not be able to be
launched in such bad weather. They set off to approach the wreck
from the south in the lee of the storm. Once there they found nine
people alive including a Mrs. Dawson holding the bodies of her two
dead children. The cobble could not accommodate them all and five
people were taken off. Once they were landed at the lighthouse William
Darling and two of the rescued crewmen from the "Forfarshire"
set out again for a second trip to take the remaining people off.
They arrived back at the lighthouse by 9 a.m. Miraculously, later
that day a lifeboat from the "Forfarshire" was
sighted by a Sloop which took off another nine survivors and landed
them at Tynemouth.
(11th September). The Tuesday following the wreck was the date of
the first inquest which took place at Bamburgh under the initiative
of Robert Smeddle, Secretary of the Crew Trustees. It was convened
at the House of Mr. Hugh Ross, now the Victoria Hotel and as the
local coroner was away Smeddle pressed the services of the Newcastle
Coroner. The jury, including some of the survivors, was hostile
and there was no surprise at the result. "Wrecked due to the
imperfections of the boilers and the culpable negligence of Captain
Humble". Humble and his wife had both perished in the wreck.
(1st October) When the body of William Doughty, a fireman on the
"Forfarshire", was washed up another inquest was held
at Hugh Ross's house. This time Mr. Just the manager of the shipping
line was invited. Some of the statements of the crew about the boilers
being faulty and the passengers insistence that the Captain should
put back to port were contradicted and this time it was decided
that the ship had come to grief purely because of the tempestuousness
of the weather.
Go to continuation of
Grace Darling
