History's Youngest Heroes: Grace Darling: Maiden of the Sea

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Grace Darling slid both bolts on the door.

She lit her oil lamp and walked up the spiral staircase of the Longstone lighthouse.

Her mother and father called out good night as she passed their bedroom.

The time was after midnight.

Grace was on watch till dawn.

It was September 1838.

Grace, aged 22, looked out at the distant Northumbrian coast.

The Farne Islands, it's like an archipelago, and they're a mixture of rocks and islands.

Some of the rocks are submerged or half submerged.

The Longstone is the outermost rock.

Grace had lived most of her life on the Farne Islands.

Since childhood, she'd helped her father learning how to keep a lighthouse.

She loved to be alone with the wind and the gulls.

In good weather, they were nice, you know, lovely.

In severe gales and foggy weather, not so good.

That night, as she stared into the darkness, a storm was rising.

A storm that would bring terrible destruction.

The events that would proceed from it could turn Grace Darling into a reluctant folk hero.

I'd always heard the name Grace Starling, you know, it was a household name.

When I was at school, it was a Grace Starling House.

David Appleby is one of the few surviving lighthouse keepers in the UK.

Today, all lighthouses are automated.

David has retired, but just after he qualified for the role in 1971...

I think they more or less asked me where I would like to go and I said, oh, I would love to go up the Farn Islands, the Longstone.

While he was there, David learned more about Grace Darling.

And I could understand how she became a heroine, you know, because it was incredible what she did.

I'm Nicola Cochlin, and for BBC Radio 4, this is History's Youngest Heroes.

Rebellion, Risk, and the Radical Power of Youth.

Grace Darling, Maiden of the Sea.

Captain John Humble watched from the deck of his ship as cargo was loaded from the dockside at Hull.

Cotton, bars of copper and spinning gear were wheeled up the gangplank.

His ship the Forfisher wasn't the biggest in Hull, but with its elegant funnel, tall masts and fast pedals, Captain Humble thought it was the most beautiful.

It was Wednesday the 5th of September 1838.

The Forfisher was bound for Dundee.

It was before the railways have really taken route, so coastal traffic for passengers, it's the big thing.

Hugh Cunningham is the author of Grace Darling, Victorian Heroine.

In this bold new industrial age, paddle steamers steamers were becoming increasingly popular.

Vessels such as the Warfare took thousands of people up the east coast every month.

It was a ship which had been built in Dundee.

It did a trip down to Howe once or twice a week through the year.

Waiting to board were 39 passengers.

Cabin passengers came first, starting with one Mr.

Bell, a farm manager.

A woman with a son and grandson, a couple who had a boy from Russia, rather intriguing.

Next was Tom Buchanan, a baker who was travelling in steerage.

He was followed by a merchant, a weaver, and more.

A mother, Sarah Dawson, was travelling with her son, aged seven, and her daughter, aged five.

Last aboard was a Church of Scotland minister, John Robb,

who was sailing for his health, as though he was on a cruise.

A lot of care had gone into setting up the more expensive berths.

Quite a prominent painter had been commissioned to paint pictures on the walls, and the crockery they used all had pictures of the forfeiture on it.

So they'd gone to some expense.

Captain Humble consulted his pocket watch.

It nagged in the back of his mind that there had been trouble lately with those loose rivets on the ship's boiler.

Yet he had 24 crewmen and four firemen on board and felt confident of the ship's safety.

Still, he checked the masts and sails himself.

You could never be too careful.

22 years earlier, Bamborough, Northumberland.

Grace Darling was born in 1815, the daughter of the lighthousekeeper on the Farne Isles.

Grace had five brothers and three sisters.

It was a large family.

Grace was one of the youngest siblings, just a few weeks old when she made her first sea crossing.

from the town of Bamborough to the Farne Islands.

Even on a calm day, the currents in those waters were strong.

Her father, William, took great care in rowing her and her mother, Thomason, to their home on Brownsman Island.

Your grandfather was a lighthousekeeper on the Brownsman as well, so it was like a tradition in the family.

And of course, it was a different life then.

They lived there all year round, with occasional trips to the mainland.

Brownsman offered plenty of place to roam, with seals and puffins to watch.

The darling family lived in a cottage by the sea.

As a child, Grace collected seashells and birds' eggs.

She took care of a nesting eider duck.

Grace's mother taught her how to knit, spin, and sew.

Her father taught her how to read and write.

She read widely, nearly all theology.

This is a very Christian family, and I think her faith is very important to her.

Grace wrote in a letter,

I have no time to spare.

But when I've been on the main, I'm quite surprised to see people generally after what they call getting their day's work done.

They sit down, some to play at cards, which I do not understand.

Perhaps as well, for my father says they are some of the devil's books.

Others to read romances, novels and plays, which are books my father will not allow a place in our house, for he says they are throwing away time.

In this idyllic setting, William Darling had a serious job.

He had to keep the lighthouse lamp lit every night.

When ships were wrecked, he and his family manned lifeboats to save people.

In the sad event that lives were lost, the darlings prayed together as bodies were recovered from the sea.

The fawns were on the shipping lane, you know, the east coast shipping lane, and they stick out four and a half miles, you know, from the mainland.

The islands and rocks are in random places, so obviously very dangerous for ships going up and down.

In February 1823, a ship called the George and Mary sank.

It took with it 100 souls.

Permission was granted to build a new lighthouse on the outermost island of Longstone.

Constructed over the winter of 1825, its smooth curving walls reached a height of 30 meters.

William Darling moved from Brownsman Island to serve as keeper of this new lighthouse on Longstone in February 1826.

Grace was then 10 years old.

Longstone was even more isolated than Brownsman.

The lighthouse was on a small bare rock, just a few feet above water at high tide.

It had a particular feel to it.

It had a smell of brass polish, the smell of seaweed and salty sea air, the smell of actually seagulls droppings.

The move to Longstone marked the effective end of Grace Darling's childhood.

Her older brothers and sisters, one by one, went to live on the mainland.

Grace was left alone on the island with her mother and father.

She got a lot of pleasure in life from birds, from collecting shells, but it would be one which she didn't actually meet many people.

The darling's lifeline was a cobalt, a type of heavy wooden fishing boat around six meters long.

The family's crops and animals remained on Brownsman, where there was space to grow and graze.

The darlings darlings had to travel there regularly to collect food and supplies.

To row a cobalt alone required almost superhuman strength.

Yet as long as the sea was calm, the diminutive Grace could do it.

Obviously, she was physically strong, rowing the boat and also carrying coal and sacks of coal and all that kind of thing.

It was very physically hard, a physically hard life.

As she grew, Grace helped her father out with more of his tasks.

Duties were very routine, you know, fetching and carrying, pumping up oil, keeping everything clean.

The living space with a big coal fire and brasswork was always shining spotless.

And at the top of the lighthouse tower was the light itself.

Trinity House, the official lighthouse authority, insisted that all lamps be lit at sunset.

In the 1830s, This was all still done with flame.

The flames had to be kept burning bright every night.

Wicks were trimmed every three hours.

Grace wrote, I have seven apartments in the house to keep in a state fit to be inspected every day by a gentleman, so that my hands are kept very busy, that I never think the time long, but often too short.

Either William or Grace kept watch until midnight, then they swapped.

The next watch lasted from midnight till dawn.

And they would look out for ships in distress, looking out for flares and any distress.

The darlings knew the coast was dangerous, yet nothing could have prepared Grace for what would come that morning in 1838.

Flambera Head, Yorkshire.

The Forfershire had been under steam for nine hours.

It made good progress around the great spit of Spurn Head.

As dusk fell, it chugged steadily up the coast.

At four o'clock in the morning, Captain Humble strode across the deck.

There was a problem.

The starboard boiler was leaking.

It wasn't an old boat by any means, but if you look at these paddle steamers, they were difficult to look after.

Boiling water sprayed everywhere.

Humble told his firemen to do what they could.

Someone had seen some weakness in one of the boilers, and they had to sort of close down two of the fires and repair it again.

As its steam pressure dropped, the ship's huge paddle wheel slowed to a crawl.

Passengers dozing on deck looked out as the moonlight illuminated the chalk cliffs of Flamber ahead.

Every 30 seconds, the lighthouse flashed, two white flashes, one red, repeating its pattern as the forfeiture drifted quietly northwards.

Two hours later, the firemen had completed their repair.

Below deck, coal trimmer John McQueen shoveled more coal into the furnace.

Once more, The great paddle wheels began to turn.

At six o'clock in the evening, they passed the spectacular sight of Bamborough Castle dating back to Anglo-Saxon times.

It rose magnificently out of a rock on the Northumbrian coast, silhouette against the setting sun.

The passengers prepared for supper.

At the helm, Captain Humble had a choice to make.

With the treacherous foreign islands approaching, he could go around them, diverting his course far out into the open sea or stick to the narrow channel between the islands and the coast.

The one thing he mustn't do was go through the channels between the islands themselves.

The Fan Isles themselves were really dangerous, particularly little narrow bits between the islands.

They called them guts.

Captain Humble decided to stick to the coastline.

Even when I was there, ships used to use the inner channel, which was between the inner fawn and the mainland, which was quite a wide gap.

As the Four Fisher paddled through, Humble felt the wind change.

It reversed, abruptly blowing from the front, warm and fast.

Also, the visibility wasn't good.

Often the southeast wind does give warm, clammy weather, and it wouldn't be...

it wouldn't be really clear.

As the Fourfisher passed Holy Island, darkness fell.

The wind picked up.

Passengers retreated inside.

Then Humble was called back to the boiler room.

There's no boiling water slashing around everywhere.

This was much more serious than the previous leak.

With the engines out, Humble summoned the crew to the masts, fore and aft, to raise the sails.

Early steamers had sail as a kind of fallbacks, and they put the sails up.

As the storm built, the tide changed.

By now, the sky was pitch black.

The Forfisher was pushed into the coast.

By one o'clock in the morning captain humble gave up hope of continuing their voyage to the safety of dundee

he shouted to the crew to double back now they would seek shelter on the far side of the farn islands and they then begin probably really drifting south

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One hour earlier.

At Longstone Lighthouse, William Darling woke Grace up and he warned her a gale was blowing.

Together they went out to secure the cobal, shouting over the wind as they tied up the fishing boat.

High tide was still four hours away.

William told Grace to keep an especially close watch.

He retired to bed, while Grace climbed the lighthouse steps.

At four in the morning, over the spray of the sea, The crew of the Forfisher heard waves crash against the rock.

In the chaos of the storm, Captain Humble had confused the mainland lighthouse for the island lighthouse.

The ship was now sailing through the narrow channels between the far and islands.

As the mist cleared, they could see dark glistening rock before them.

Humboldt desperately cried out.

He said, lower the anchors, but the chains were rusty and the anchors didn't fall down.

In any case, it was too late to save the ship.

The crew hurried to launch a small lifeboat.

Packing nine people into it, they lowered it into the water.

As it hit the surface, it was dragged off into the dark.

As the sea ebbed and flowed, the forefisher smashed down on jagged rock.

A wave brings it back again, then it's lifted up again.

I think it would have been absolute terror.

The paddle steamer caught on the rock.

The sea heaved.

The forefisher was split in in two.

The stern falls off, and the stern is where most of the passengers are,

and they're very rapidly drowned.

Captain Humble went down with his ship, among those taken by the sea.

At a quarter to five, Grace Darling looked out from the Longstone lighthouse.

In the distance, she thought she could see something.

Was it a ship?

Grace woke her parents.

She and William looked through the telescope.

Peering through to see if they could see any more.

But in the darkness, Grace and William could not make much out.

They waited for sunrise.

At seven o'clock, in the first light of dawn, Grace could see movement.

Maybe even figures.

They can see there are people.

Grace made out several shapes on the tiny island of Big Harker.

Out of 60 or so people who had been on board the Forfisher, 12 had survived the wreck and made it to the island.

Now those survivors could only cling onto the rock and await help that might never come.

The darlings were at a loss.

Their own island of Longstone was mostly underwater with the high tide.

Only Grace and her father were able to row the cobalt.

The three of them must have just looked at the sea and thought,

what are we going to do?

They They thought, oh, well, the lifeboat's not coming out in this, so they must have thought, well, there's only us here.

The shipwreck survivors on Big Harker were in a terrible state.

Reverend John Robb, who had been at sea for his health, swiftly died of exposure.

Sarah Dawson could do nothing as her two young children died in her arms.

Nine people remained.

exhausted and freezing cold.

At the Longstone, Grace and her father resolved to row out and save those marooned.

Yet her mother Thomason was apprehensive.

Her mother was considerably older than her husband, and she urged Grace and her father not to go and risk their lives.

On a calm day, Grace could row the Kobal alone.

On a morning like this, with the sea churning, it required four strong men to control it.

For an older man and his young daughter to attempt it was extraordinarily dangerous.

I mean, sometimes I think about her father.

I think to myself, well, was he not worried for his daughter, but being young, maybe she didn't think too much.

She thought, right, I'll just do it.

I'll help my father to do it, you know, and that might have made her feel good.

And yeah, she thought about others rather than herself.

William Darling pulled open the lighthouse door.

Buffeted by wind, they made their way to the cobalt and untied it.

Grace steadied the small boat as William stepped in.

Thomason looked down with trepidation as her husband and daughter took one oar each, pushed off into the surging waves.

It was impossible to row a straight line to the wreck.

The cobal would quickly capsize or be torn up by the rocks.

They've had to go quite a way out the way to avoid rocks and to avoid the worse of the sea.

Straining on their oars, Grace and William drove the boat on.

Slowly, painstakingly, they progressed across the treacherous waters.

I mean, I've seen the boat.

I don't think I could pick the oars up myself, never mind.

Row with them.

Grace and William powered on through the spray.

And her and her father would have used the tides, you know, and the wind, so they knew all the tricks of the trade.

After nearly half an hour of rowing, they began to pass floating fragments of wood.

They could make out the edges of the wreck.

They drew the cobalt up alongside Big Harker.

William handed Grace his oar.

William, darling, jumps onto the rock and Grace is left on her own.

Grace steadied the boat, alone,

struggling against the intense swell and drag of the North Sea.

This moment would baffle and awe chroniclers and storytellers for decades to come.

I just can't believe that she could do a thing like that, you know, and held the boat off the rock.

I think to myself, I wonder if anybody could do it today, even an Olympic athlete.

It just was an incredible feat.

And the physical challenge would get harder and harder with every person brought aboard.

William Darling has to make a quick assessment of who's there.

Three dead bodies leave them.

Woman in distress, certainly take her.

I need some crew members who can row, and we'll come back for the rest.

And have to get them safely into the cobalt.

Get the weight exactly right so there's not one side which is too heavy.

William brought five survivors on board.

Three crewmen took aboards with him.

As they rode back to the Longstone, Grace sat in the middle of the cobalt, wrapping blankets around two people who were lying down, too weak to even sit up.

When they reached the landstone, William and two others returned to rescue the remaining passengers.

Grace had to comfort the devastated Mrs.

Dawson.

Mrs.

Dawson had lost her two children in the time it had taken for Grace and her father to await the sunrise and row out to the rock.

Afterwards, Grace said, The sufferings of the poor woman seem to me to be rarely equaled, having struggled nearly two hours to save her dear children until they both died in in her hands and the children's bodies were left on the rock.

Many lives were lost that day, but the incredible bravery and physical feat of Grace and William Darling saved nine souls.

On the 8th of September, Northumberland awoke to the aftermath of a great storm, and the world awoke to a new hero.

Grace Darling.

The press was onto this very rapidly indeed.

It's not only local newspapers, they get it to London.

The Times produces a long report on it.

Really sort of overblown account of how dangerous it all was.

Journalists wrote that Grace Darling heard voices shouting from the wreck half a mile away.

They claimed she dragged her father out to help them.

Baffled by this attention, Grace wrote back.

correcting their mistakes.

An extraordinary level of fiction enters into the accounts of what had happened.

They'll make out that William Darling was a veteran of Waterloo and Grace, of course, as a prospective husband who's going to get drowned as well

on the boat.

The newspapers could not believe that these rescues had been carried out by a slight young woman.

Women weren't supposed to be employed in jobs like that, or people didn't think of them as being in jobs like that.

They're not supposed to be strong.

They're not supposed to be able to row.

And I think people are just astonished.

Then people begin to wonder: how on earth was this person brought up?

What sort of life has she had that she could do this?

In a rapidly industrializing nation, Grace was idealized as a young woman brought up in an old-fashioned way, battling nature and all its elements.

Women and men fantasize about her.

They write to us saying,

please send me something of you.

Grace's fans requested her signature, a handkerchief, even a lock of her hair.

The cape in which she wore when she rode out was cut up into various bits for different people to have.

Grace hoped that by providing these relics, she might satisfy the public so that she could get back to work.

She had more than enough to be getting on with, with keeping the lighthouse fit for inspection.

Instead, by the summer of 1840, the Faran Islands became a sought-after destination for tourists.

Lots of painters and sculptors come.

There are yachts turning up at the Longstone.

We just come to see the heroine.

And Grace doesn't like this.

She says, you know, people come to stare at me.

And they do.

The artists produced Staffordshire pottery figurines, watercolours, and some rather improbable oil paintings of Grace Grace rowing about alone, dressed in a ball gown.

They wrote songs about her.

The poet William Wordsworth wrote impassioned verses about the rescue.

There were people wanting her to go down to London to appear on the stage, and all she would have to do was sit in a cobalt and pretend to row for about half an hour.

Grace found all this attention quite impossible.

She loathed any kind of public appearance.

They are sort of summoned or invited to Anick Castle, where the Duke of Northumberland is going to present her with this medal.

And they have a nice time, but when they get out into Anik, there's a crowd there and she has to be sort of hustled away and she doesn't like that.

And then there's a proposal she might go to Newcastle and

be somewhere in public.

And William Darling writes to the mayor of Newcastle saying you've no idea how distressing she would find that.

Grace Darling's fame spread across the whole world and she was seen as a model for other heroines.

American lighthousekeeper Ida Wally Lewis rescued numerous people in the 19th century.

Australian girl Grace Bussell helped rescue 50 people in Western Australia in 1876.

Canadian lighthousekeeper's daughter Roberta Boyd rescued two men whose boat had overturned in 1882.

All these women were heralded as America's or Australia's, or Canada's, Grace Darling.

Grace may not have wanted her fame, but it greatly outlived her.

In 1842, just four years after the rescue of survivors of the Forfisher, Grace Darling fell ill while visiting the mainland.

She died, aged just 26.

The press claimed that fame had killed her.

Even her death had to be mythologized.

She dies of tuberculosis, which is a common cause of death.

You never quite know whether to believe moving accounts of a death, but she dies the perfect death.

She knows she's going to die.

She gathers the family around her,

says her last goodbyes,

and asks her father to hold her and dies in his arms.

I take any account of a death scene with a pinch of salt,

but it fits perfectly the picture.

Next time, on history's youngest heroes.

Before she became a Hollywood star, how did the young Audrey Hepburn take on the Nazis in the Netherlands?

She believed very much that there is a struggle between good and evil and you have to take sides.

Audrey Hepburn's teenage resistance.

Hi, I'm Kristy Young, and I'm happy to tell you that Young Again, my podcast for BBC Radio 4, is back with more conversations with people who fascinate me.

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Part of being human is that we are vulnerable.

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It's quite a thing to be eight years old and then suddenly to have a criminal record.

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