![]() Memorial window to Grace Darling (detail) St Aidan's Church in Bamburgh His personal gifts to her family and her included a timepiece and a silver teapot. Her unexpected wealth and fame were such that the Duke of Northumberland took on a role as her self-appointed guardian and founder of a trust, established to look after the donations offered to her. ![]() Subscriptions and donations totaling over £700 (equivalent to about £67,100 in 2021) were raised for her, including £50 from Queen Victoria more than a dozen portrait painters sailed to her island home to capture her likeness, and hundreds of gifts, letters, and even marriage proposals were delivered to her. Grace and her father were awarded the Silver Medal for Bravery by the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck, later named the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). Īs news of her role in the rescue reached the public, her combination of bravery and simple virtue set her out as exemplary, and led to an uneasy role as the nation's heroine. Nine other passengers and crew had managed to float off a lifeboat from the stern section before it, too, sank, and were picked up in the night by a passing Montrose sloop, and brought into South Shields that same night. All that remained at daybreak was the portside paddlebox casing. Those rescued by Darling and her father were from the bow section of the vessel, which had been held by the rocks for some time before sinking. The vessel broke in two almost immediately upon hitting the rocks. The Forfarshire had been carrying 62 people. The weather deteriorated to the extent that everyone was obliged to remain at the lighthouse for three days before returning to shore. Darling's brother, William Brooks Darling, was one of the seven fishermen in the lifeboat. Returning to North Sunderland was too dangerous, so they rowed to the lighthouse to take shelter. Meanwhile, the lifeboat had set out from Seahouses, but arrived at Big Harcar rock after Darling and her father had completed their rescue operation all they found were the bodies of Mrs Dawson's children and of a clergyman. Darling then remained at the lighthouse while William and three of the rescued crew members rowed back and recovered four more survivors. William and three of the rescued men then rowed the boat back to the lighthouse. Dawson had lost her two young children (James, 7, and Matilda, 5) during the night. Darling kept the coble steady in the water, while her father helped four men and the lone surviving woman, Sarah Dawson, into the boat. Grace Darling at the Forfarshire by Thomas Musgrave Joyĭarling and her father, William, determined that the weather was too rough for the lifeboat to put out from Seahouses (then North Sunderland), so they took a rowing boat (a 21 ft (6.4 m), four-man Northumberland coble) across to the survivors, taking a long route that kept to the lee side of the islands, a distance of nearly a mile (about 1.5 km). The Forfarshire had foundered on the rocks and broken in half one of the halves had sunk during the night. In the early hours of 7 September 1838, Darling, looking from an upstairs window, spotted the wreck and survivors of the Forfarshire on Big Harcar, a nearby low, rocky island. ![]() The room was their living room, dining room, and kitchen in one, and had a spiral staircase leading to three bedrooms above and the light at the top of the tower. The family spent most of their time on the ground floor of the lighthouse, which consisted of a large room, heated by a wooden stove. Longstone Lighthouse had better accommodation, but the island itself was slightly less hospitable, so William would row back to Brownsman to gather vegetables from their former garden and to feed the animals. The accommodation was basic, and the lighthouse was not located in a good place to guide shipping to safety, so in 1826, the family moved to the newly constructed lighthouse on Longstone Island. Her father ran the lighthouse (built in 1795) for Trinity House, and earned a salary of £70 per year (equivalent to £5,500 in 2021 ) with a bonus of £10 for satisfactory service. She was the seventh of nine children (four brothers and four sisters) born to William and Thomasin Darling, and when only a few weeks old, she was taken to live on Brownsman Island, one of the Farne Islands, in a small cottage attached to the lighthouse. Grace Darling was born on 24 November 1815 at her grandfather's house in Northumberland. Lighthouse at Longstone: The upper window in the white ring was Grace Darling's bedroom, from which she saw the wreckage of the Forfarshire.
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