Grace Darling's Daring Deed
Who has not heard of Grace Darling and her plucky rescue of survivors from the wrecked steamship Forfarshire? Thanks to flowery Victorian journalism, and the British penchant for fanfare, Grace's single and simple deed earned immortality. As her biographer, Jessica Mitford, puts it, "Grace Darling can be precisely and anachronistically described as the first media heroine."
At dawn on September 7, 1838, Grace and her father, William Darling, the keeper of Longstone Lighthouse off England's Northumberland Coast, awoke to the howl of wind and crash of sea about their home. Spume filled the air as they looked out on the North Sea morning, yet Grace's keen eyes spotted a ship aground on Big Harcar Rock, almost a mile away. A look through the telescope revealed survivors clinging to the wreck. Grace, 22-years-old and anxious for excitement, beseeched her father to attempt a rescue.
The lighthouse coble, a short, flatbottomed boat, was lowered. Grace and her father were able rowers, but the violent tide pushed the stout little boat off course several times, making their journey to the Forfarshire twice as long. They reached the wreck and took off five of the nine survivors, which were taken back to the lighthouse. Grace stayed with those rescued while her father and two of the rescued seamen made a second trip to the wreck to fetch the remaining survivors. (A report later confirmed that forty people had drowned before the Darlings arrived!) When the rescued were safely aboard the lighthouse, Grace and her mother tended to injuries and cooked meals. It was three days before the survivors could be taken ashore.
On September 11 newspapers and broadsides of the day printed the story of the loss of the Forfarshire. There was no mention of the Darlings' bravery, as arguments over the cause of the wreck and the possibility that the Forfarshire's owners had willfully sent a disabled ship to sea eclipsed the news of the rescue. When the scandal died down, a "penny-a-liner" reporter grabbed the Grace Darling story for his gossip broadside and gave it his melodramatic best. The deed leaped from paper to paper, with each account more thrilling and courageous: "Surely, imagination in its loftiest creations never invested the female character with such a degree of fortitude as had been evinced by Miss Grace Horsley Darling on this occasion. Is there in the whole field of history, or of fiction even, one instance of female heroism to compare for one moment with this?"
Painters rushed to Longstone to capture Grace's dainty face and slight figure, then drop it in exaggerated scenes of angry seas and suffering humanity. Poets and minstrels wrote tributes to the "Grace of womanhood and Darling of mankind," and peddlers hawked locks of her hair and swatches of fabric from the dress she had worn on the rescue. A public conscription for the Darlings raised a gift of several hundred pounds, to which the Royal Humane Society added gold lifesaving medals and a silver tea set. Grace Darling had captured the public imagination.Not unlike today's superstars, Grace spent the next few years dealing with the media, such as it was in the 1830s, and pursuing privacy and a quiet life. She continued to live on Longstone Light with her parents, but was besieged with mail, visitors, and requests for appearances. She went ashore to Bamburgh in April 1842 to visit her sister and attend to financial affairs, but was soon stricken with the influenza that had struck northern England. Grace never recovered.
In October 1842, four years after her brave accomplishment, Grace died, probably of pneumonia -- a tragic finale that caused much public grief and elevated her image to saintly eminence. She was buried in Bamburgh churchyard before a huge crowd of mourners, who also contributed money for a memorial to be built over her grave. Even Queen Victoria sent £20. St. Aidans Church had a stained glass window made showing Grace rescuing the shipwrecked.
Over the years, Grace's legend grew. She became the model for Victorian girls, her story of feminine courage repeated so often in magazines of the day that her name was absorbed into everyday English as a term meaning "brave woman." Naturally, the town of Bamburgh has a museum dedicated to her, and Longstone Lighthouse doubles as a navigational aid and tourist attraction. Not to be outdone, Americans produced Ida Lewis of Rhode Island's Lime Rock Lighthouse, who rescued time and again; yet Ida was often called "America's Grace Darling."
Even today, the name Grace Darling brings awe to our hearts. Her image endures, according to Jessica Mitford, because she has been successfully "transmogrified," an unwieldy term that describes the cult hyperbole that might apply equally to Amelia Erhart or the Grand Duchess Anastasia. She has been re-invented so many times, we wonder who she really was.
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All illustrations courtesy of Grace Darling Museum, Bamburgh. The museum contains biographies of Grace and facsimiles of William Darling's journal, plus several romanticized paintings of the rescue. Personal relics include Grace Darling's shawls, books, letters, and awards. Relics recovered from the Forfarshire also can be seen as well as the coble (boat) used for the rescue. The museumis open from april 1st through mid-October. For more information, write: Curator, Grace Darling Museum, 109 Main Street, Seahouses, NE68 7TS, England.
This article originally appeared in Mariner's Weather Log, Summer 1994.
©Elinor De Wire, 1994
Words to the "Grace Darling Song" --
'Twas on the Longstone Lighthouse, there dwelt and English maid;
Pure as the air around her, of danger ne'er afraid;
One morning just at daybreak, a storm-tossed wreck she spied;
And tho' to try seemed madness, "I'll save the crew!' she cried.
And she pull'd away, o'er the rolling sea,
Over the waters blue --
'Help! Help!' she could hear the cry of the shipwreck'd crew --
But Grace had an English heart,
And the raging storm she brav'd --
She pull'd away, mid the dashing spray,
And the crew she saved!