The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter

The wind had howled all night around the lighthouse. Waves crashed against the rocks below and threw spray high up the walls.

Grace Darling had been watching from her window. A little before five in the morning, in the grey half-light, she saw something dark on the rocks of Big Harcar, a low island about a mile away. It was the wreck of a ship.

She called her father.

The family on the rock

Grace was twenty-two. She lived with her parents in the Longstone Lighthouse, on one of the bare, rocky Farne Islands off the coast of Northumberland, in the north-east of England. Her father, William Darling, was the lighthouse keeper. Grace had grown up there, among the seabirds and the seals, helping to keep the great lamp burning through the night.

The family knew the sea around the islands very well. They knew how quickly it could turn, and how many ships had been lost on those rocks.

The wreck of the Forfarshire

The ship was the Forfarshire, a steamship carrying passengers and cargo from Hull to Dundee in Scotland. There were around sixty people on board.

During the night, her boilers had started to leak, and her engines had stopped. Without power, she was driven by the storm toward the islands. Around four in the morning she struck the rock and broke in two. The back half of the ship was swept away almost at once, and most of the people on board were lost.

A few of the crew managed to get away in one of the ship's boats, and were later picked up by a passing vessel. But some people were still clinging to the rock where the front half of the ship had been thrown.

Into the storm

As the light grew, Grace and her father could see figures moving on Big Harcar. Some people were still alive.

The sea was far too rough for the lifeboat from the mainland to come out quickly. If anyone was going to reach those people in time, it would have to be the Darlings. They had only a coble, a small, open wooden rowing boat. And there were only two of them to row it.

Grace and her father climbed into the boat, each took an oar, and pulled out into the storm. They could not row straight across, because the waves were too wild. Instead they rowed a longer way round, in the shelter of the islands, nearly a mile through the heaving water.

At last they came close to the rock. Her father jumped across onto it. Grace had to keep the boat steady on her own, rowing hard to stop it from being smashed against the rocks.

Nine on the rock

There were nine survivors. They were cold, soaked and exhausted. Among them was a woman, Mrs Sarah Dawson. Her two small children had died in her arms during the night.

The little boat could not carry everyone at once. On the first trip, Grace and her father took five people back to the lighthouse, including Mrs Dawson and an injured man. Then William Darling and two of the rescued crewmen rowed back for the other four, while Grace stayed behind. All nine were brought safely to the lighthouse.

The storm went on for days. The survivors had to stay at the lighthouse, and Grace and her mother looked after them, giving them dry clothes, warm food and beds. The crew of the lifeboat from the mainland, which had arrived after the rescue, had to stay too, among them Grace's brother.

Famous

Within weeks, the whole of Britain had heard of Grace Darling.

Newspapers printed the story. Artists travelled to the lighthouse to paint her portrait. Poems and songs were written about her. People wrote her letters and sent her gifts, and asked for locks of her hair. Queen Victoria sent her fifty pounds. She and her father were both given medals for their courage.

Grace found the fame difficult. She was a quiet, modest young woman, and she wanted to go on living her ordinary life at the lighthouse with her family.

Sadly, she did not have long. In 1842, only four years after the rescue, she fell ill with tuberculosis. She died in October of that year, at the age of twenty-six. She was buried in the churchyard at Bamburgh, the village where she was born, within sight of the sea.

Today the small boat she rowed that morning is kept in the Grace Darling Museum in Bamburgh, run by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

Want to read more?

Hugh Cunningham's Grace Darling: Victorian Heroine tells her story and explains why she became so famous. Jessica Mitford's Grace Had an English Heart is another lively account. The RNLI's Grace Darling Museum in Bamburgh shares her history and displays her boat.