9Jat waU Jer neUt JQur!

Undoubtedly, it’s the heroism that Grace displayed following the shipwreck. She pleaded with her father to go to the rescue, despite his initial refusal because of the almost gale-force winds. They had to row 1,700 yards, and William got the survivors off the rocks while she held the boat steady. I’ve seen the boat – it’s at the Grace Darling Museum in Bamburgh. There was none of this ‘I’m not sure I can do it, I’m only a weak woman’ stuff. She just rose to the challenge. Grace went on to find fame and was immortalised in painting and poem but, sadly, contracted tuberculosis just a few years later. She died in 1842 at the age of just 26.