Grace Darling

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Grace Darling (24 November 1815 – 20 October 1842) is an English Victorian heroine, on the strength of a celebrated maritime rescue in 1838. Grace was born in 1815 at Bamburgh in Northumberland, and spent her youth in two lighthouses (Longstone – now know as Outer Farne – at Farne Island and Coquet Island) of which her father was the keeper.

In the early hours of 7 September 1838, Grace, looking from an upstairs window of the Longstone Lighthouse on the Farne Islands, spotted the ship, SS Forfarshire, which had run aground on big Harcar only a few hundred yards away. Knowing that the weather was too rough for the lifeboat to put out from the shore, Grace and her father took a rowing boat (21 ft, 4 man Northumberland Coble) across to the island and in two trips, the second without Grace Darling, rescued nine survivors (8 men of whom 4 were Forfarshire crew members and 1 woman passenger, Mrs. Dawson), bringing them safely back to the lighthouse. The Forfarshire was carrying 31 passengers and 29 crew. Later nine other people were rescued from a lifeboat by a passing vessel to be landed at Hull two days later.^{[citation needed]}

Grace Darling died of tuberculosis in 1842. She is buried with her father and mother in a modest grave in St. Aidan’s churchyard, Bamburgh, where a nearby elaborate cenotaph commemorates her life. A plain stone monument to her was erected in St. Cuthbert’s Chapel on Great Farne Island in 1848.

1 Legacy
2 See also
3 Further reading
4 External links

[edit] Legacy

Even in her lifetime, Grace’s achievement was celebrated, and she received a large financial reward in addition to the plaudits of the nation. A number of fictionalized depictions propagated the Grace Darling legend, such as Grace Darling, or the Maid of the Isles by Jerrold Vernon (1839), which gave birth to the legend of “the girl with windswept hair”. Her deed was committed to verse by William Wordsworth in his poem Grace Darling (1843). A lifeboat with her name was presented to Holy Island. One of the series of Victorian paintings by William Bell Scott at Wallington Hall in Northumberland depicts her rescue.

At Bamburgh there is a museum dedicated to her achievements and the seafaring life of the region.

It was suggested by Richard Armstrong in his 1965 biography Grace Darling: Maid and Myth that she may have suffered from a cleft lip. He is the only biographer to put forward this theory, which has been strongly disputed by other experts.

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution Mersey class lifeboat at Seahouses bears the name Grace Darling.

Singer/songwriter Dave Cousins of the Strawbs wrote Grace Darling (on Ghosts) in tribute and as a love song.

[edit] See also

Grace Bussell, a 16 year old Australian girl who rescued 50 people from the SS Georgette when it foundered off the West Australian coast in 1876. She is regarded as Australia’s national heroine. At the time of the rescue, Bussell was referred to as the “Grace Darling of the West” by journalists.
Ann Harvey, a Newfoundland 17-year old who in 1828, with her father, brother & dog, rescued 163 shipwrecked people.
Roberta Boyd, a New Brunswick girl who was hailed as the “Grace Darling of the St. Croix” after a rescue in 1882.

[edit] Further reading

Richard Armstrong - Grace Darling: Maid and Myth (1965)
Hugh Cunningham - Grace Darling - Victorian Heroine Hambledon: Continuum (2007)ISBN 9781852855482
Thomasin Darling - Grace Darling, her True Story: from Unpublished Papers in Possession of her Family (1880)
Thomasin Darling - The Journal of William Darling, Grace Darling's Father (1887)
Eva Hope - Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands, Her Life and its Lessons Walter Scott (1880)
Jessica Mitford - Grace Had an English Heart. The Story of Grace Darling, Heroine and Victorian Superstar (1998) ISBN 052524672X
Constance Smedley - Grace Darling and Her Times Hurst and Blackett (1932)