A Victorian Celebrity
Steve Newman pays tribute to the life of Grace Darling, the famous Northumberland heroine.
LONGSTONE LIGHTHOUSE is situated on the outermost of the Farne Islands, a small group of some 30 rocky outcrops lying two miles off the Northumberland coast. On the morning of September 7, 1838, it was manned by the lighthouse keeper William Darling and his family.
The night before had seen a violent storm sweep along the coast and batter the islands. In the morning, William’s daughter, Grace, looked out from an upstairs window of the lighthouse and saw the wreck of the steamship Forfarshire.
She had broken in half as she was thrown on to the rocks and the survivors were clinging to them.
Grace and her father launched their Northumbrian coble and rowed amongst huge waves and terrifying winds to make an amazing rescue.
Returning to the lighthouse, Grace and her mother and sisters helped tend to the survivors whilst her father and a sailor from the Forfarshire went back to pick up those still stranded on the rock.
Built in 1834 by Thomas Adderson of Dundee, the Forfarshire sailed every Wednesday from Hull to Dundee and made the return journey every Saturday.
She was registered in 1836 but the rocks of the Farne sealed her fate and ended her life that night along with that of her captain, his wife and 38 other passengers.
When news of the rescue got out Grace became a heroine overnight. The Queen herself sent her £50 as a token of her esteem. Newspaper reports appeared in Australia, America and Japan, and the boatmen of Seahouses made a roaring trade ferrying visitors out to the Longstone rock to meet her.
Artists painted her and hundreds of letters arrived almost daily, asking for her to kiss and return them, or to send a lock of her hair. Just like today’s celebrities, constant requests for product endorsements arrived along with invitations to attend civic functions.
Grace did not appreciate this attention as she was a quiet, modest person, and her father had to refuse these requests politely on her behalf.
She dutifully replied to her letters, but the strain of all this gradually proved too much for her. Over the next few years her health rapidly began to deteriorate and she was diagnosed with tuberculosis, passing away in Bamburgh in 1842 at the age of just twenty-six.
A monument was erected in her memory in Bamburgh churchyard so passing ships could see it, and her name lives on, all these years later. n