Gary Dolman

British Historical Fiction Writer...



Welcome to my blog


My ramblings on all things literary.


Selected posts re-blogged from

Humanity & Heroines (Re-blogged from

By garydolman, May 23 2016 07:09PM


Grace is well-known even today for her part in the rescue of several passengers and crew members of the paddle-steamer SS Forfarshire, when it ran aground and broke up on the Farne Islands, off the coast of Northumberland, England, in 1838. However, as probably the first media celebrity, hers was a fascinating and ultimately tragic tale above and beyond the rescue itself.

This is her story:




Two days earlier, the paddle-steamship SS Forfarshire (450 Tons) had sailed from Hull, Yorkshire, with passengers and a full cargo, bound for Dundee in Scotland. There were around forty cabin and deck passengers on board, (although a complete passenger list was never made), and twenty-two crewmen plus the Captain, John Humble, and his wife.

Whilst docked at Hull, the ship's boilers had been inspected and repairs made. However, the boilers continued to give cause for concern from early in the voyage, leaking and continually losing pressure, and there was much talk that the Forfarshire should head for one of the ports on the River Tyne for repair - especially as the seas were heavy. Captain Humble however assured passengers there was nothing to be concerned about.

By early evening on Thursday, 6th September they steamed north, past the Farne Islands, but by now the condition of the boilers meant that the crew were forced to raise sail in order to assist passage. As the ship passed Berwick-upon-Tweed the weather deteriorated further and the wind rose to a northerly gale. The extra pressure this exerted on the boilers caused them to fail completely and the engines were stopped. Under pressure of wind and current, the Forfarshire began to drift south.

At 1.00 am on Friday, 7th September, and now under sail in an increasing storm, Captain Humble gave the order to turn back, intending to seek shelter near the Farnes. After a difficult period negotiating rapidly changing tidal currents and with the big paddle-boxes catching the swell and making navigation extremely difficult, the light of a lighthouse was seen. Captain Humble identified it as the lighthouse of the Inner Farne and, intending to find shelter in Fairway (the relatively slack water between this island and the coast), he kept the lighthouse to his port bow.


At 4.00am the ship hit the Big Harcar Rock. Immediately the crew lowered the quarter-boat and eight of them jumped in. The swift current and winds through the Piper Gut channel carried them away from the wreck and into the relative safety of the open sea, where they were picked up by a passing ship.


There were a few however who had survived on the deck, clinging to anything they could find. To make matters worse, the tide was now falling, causing the wreck to become unstable. The survivors scrambled onto the rock, including a Mrs Sarah Dawson with her two children, and they also brought out the corpse of another passenger, a Reverend Robb, deciding to save his body from the sea.



William Darling thought the sea too rough for the North Sunderland (Seahouses) lifeboat to put out even if the wreck had been seen from the look-out point on Bamburgh Castle at all, and so agreed with Grace that they take their own coble in an attempt to rescue them.


He leapt across onto the Big Harcar rock whilst Grace somehow held the coble steady. Mrs Dawson’s two small children were dead and William had to insist that they were left behind, along with the Reverend Robb’s corpse. An injured passenger was also taken, together with two crew members to help row the coble. Grace presumably would have comforted Mrs Dawson and nursed the injured man as best she could.



Gifts, awards and donations for Grace came flooding in. Silks, silverware, books and bibles arrived from admirers across the country and even from abroad. Queen Victoria, herself only nineteen, sent Grace £50. Hundreds of letters were sent to Longstone, many requesting her autograph, locks of her hair or a piece of the clothing she wore during the rescue.






In 1842, her brother William Brooks Darling was appointed assistant lighthouse keeper to their father at Longstone. In order to accommodate his wife and family, cottages had to be built beside the lighthouse. Not only were there many workmen present on the island whilst construction was taking place, William Brooks’ family also had to lodge in the lighthouse. Their sister Mary Ann, a widow, had already moved back to Longstone with her daughter, and Grace had no privacy, nowhere to hide away, even in what was her own home.

It was decided that Grace needed time away from the bustle, and in March she went a little way south to Coquet Island, where her eldest brother, William, was keeper of the lighthouse. Her short appearance at Seahouses harbour in boarding the steamer caused a sensation and Grace was forced to hide below deck. From Coquet Island she went on to the town of Alnwick, where she stayed with her cousins before returning to Longstone. Ominously, she 'caught the cold' during this time and developed a persistent cough.



Grace's mental health suffered. She began to have psychotic experiences of staring eyes and of crowds outside her window, and paranoid delusions that everyone was finding fault with her. She grew deeply anxious and depressed, becoming feverish and increasingly weak. As her elder sister Thomasin wrote of her at this time: “She went like the snow.”


Grace began to realise that the end from tuberculosis was close. She asked for her family to be summoned, and from her deathbed Grace distributed personal items to her relatives. She was quite calm and composed at this time. I believe that the knowledge that she was dying and that the unrelenting pressure would soon be over was a blessed relief to her.




Oct 22 2016 07:23AM by Joe Catcheside


great to see the memory of this 1ith century heroine is not lost.

What evidence is there Grace had delusions in her final months? There's no reference to this in Cunningham, or any of the earlier bio- (or hagio-) graphies, nor in Thomasin's memoir, or in the letters at Woodhorn.

Also, just as a note, the houses in Prudhoe Street were new built in1842, and are all small terraces; Grace stayed at 'Green Batt', which I speculate must be the private 'Green Batt house' at the enclosed end of the church, which is the oldest that quadrangle.

Smedley has her in the shadow of the church, but as far as I can find, it wasn't there until later in the decade (funded largely by The 3rd Duke).


Add a comment
* Required