Longstone Lighthouse & The Rescue

 

When only a few weeks old, Grace was taken to live on Brownsman Island, one of the Farne Islands, in a small cottage attached to the lighthouse. Her father ran the lighthouse (built in 1795) for Trinity House. 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.

 

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 family spent most of their time on the ground floor of the lighthouse, which consisted of a large room, heated by a wooden stove. 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.

 

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 Forfarshire had foundered on the rocks and broken in half; one of the halves had sunk during the night.

 

Her father William and she determined that the weather was too rough for the lifeboat to put out from Seahouses so they took a rowing boat across to the survivors, taking a long route that kept to the lee side of the islands, a distance of nearly a mile. Darling kept the coble steady in the water, while her father helped four men and the lone surviving woman, Sarah Dawson, into the boat. Although she survived the sinking, Mrs. Dawson had lost her two young children (James, 7, and Matilda, 5) during the night. William and three of the rescued men then rowed the boat back to the lighthouse. Darling then remained at the lighthouse while William and three of the rescued crew members rowed back and recovered four more survivors.

 

"The cries of the sufferers

on the remaining part of the wreck

were heard during the night".

- Grace Darling -