The facts of this, the most famous of all open boat rescues, were grossly distorted by irresponsible Victorian writers and artists, causing Grace and her heroic family great distress. The disgraceful first inquest was held by a self-appointed unqualified coroner, who refused to allow certain key witnesses to give evidence. These notes very briefly outline what happened.

On 5th September 1838 the luxury paddle steamer Forfarshire with sixty-one* passengers and crew on board was bound for Dundee, when off St Abbs Head in heavy weather her boilers failed. Her captain therefore decided to run back under auxiliary sail to shelter under the lee of the Inner Farne Island. In the severe conditions the Longstone (Outer Farne) light was mistaken for the Inner Farne light, and the Forfarshire consequently hit the Harcar rocks. This was about 4am the next morning. The ship’s boat was launched with nine persons (mostly crew) aboard, and somehow cleared the maze of rocks, and these survivors were eventually picked up by a sailing ship. The Forfarshire’s captain and his wife however died with the ship.

At dawn, the Longstone lighthouse-keeper’s daughter, Grace Darling, on watch duty at the time, saw and reported the wreck, which was about a half mile away**. Some survivors were seen on the rocks. Grace’s father, William Darling the head lighthouse keeper, realising that the lifeboats stationed at Seahouses and Bamburgh would be unable to get out in the prevailing conditions, decided that the only hope of rescue lay with him using the lighthouse’s heavy 22’-6” coble. William had previously used this boat for an epic rescue in similarly dangerous conditions, but then he had his four strong sons as crew. Now all his sons were away, and he could only call on Grace, a lightly built girl of twenty-two. It is very likely that the proposal to aid her father in the boat first came from Grace, but had he not thought the attempt practicable, he was not the man to endanger her life and his own in weak concession to girlish importunity***. William Darling then took the bold but calculated decision to row with Grace down to the Harcar rocks with wind, and hopefully get stronger oarsmen from among the survivors for the even harder return journey to the Longstone Light.

However there was no hope of launching the coble directly in those savage seas, so with the help of Grace’s mother, a woman in her sixties, they dragged the heavy boat over to the sheltered side of the Longstone Rocks and launched it into the Sunderland Hole. William and Grace then rowed through the narrow Crawford Gut to get into the lee of the Clove Car and Harcar rocks, and thence to the wreck (see sketch map). One of the less fanciful oil paintings of the event shows Grace using an oar to steer from the stern while her father rowed with a single oar from one side. Conditions may well have been that bad, but the coble had no stern crutch! When they reached the wreck, Grace had to hold the boat off the rocks alone while her father leapt ashore to the survivors. There were nine left alive, one woman holding the bodies of her two dead children. Five of these survivors were seamen, so two of them were able help row the coble back against wind to the lighthouse with some of the passengers, and then return with William for the rest.

Ironically, the Darling’s epic rescue turned out to be unnecessary. William’s judgment that the Seahouses lifeboat could not get away in those conditions was correct, but the lifeboat coxswain and crew (including one of Grace’s brothers) had heroically and with superb seamanship managed to launch a fishing coble. After a great struggle they reached the wreck, only to find the survivors already rescued! Return in those conditions being out of the question, they had to carry on to shelter at the Longstone Light, staying there wet and hungry until the evening of the ninth. Only then were they able to return with the survivors, not to Seahouses which was still too dangerous to enter but to tiny Beadnell Haven where the entrance was more sheltered.

Grace Darling died of tuberculosis a few years later. Stress from the slurs on her family and consequent ill feeling may well have contributed to her early death. (Popular ballads made out that Grace had to talk her father into making the rescue bid, and a popular picture showed Grace rowing out alone in a tiny dinghy!) In fact not only Grace but also the men of the Darling family behaved with great heroism and sound judgment. Grace’s sister Thomasin, in whose arms Grace died, wrote a reliable account of the rescue.

Much of the above information is taken from the excellent booklet Grace Darling by W Montgomery and M Scott Weightman, obtainable from the Grace Darling Museum at Bamburgh, where the coble actually used in the rescue is preserved.

Some accounts say 63.

Some accounts say only 400 yards, but the Forfarshire is said to have lodged on the far side of the Harcar. This is at least a half a mile from the Longstone.

From Grace Darling: Her True Story by Thomasin Darling and D Atkinson.