ANDREW LEWIS: The ship was washed into the rocks, into the

Farne Islands, and was eventually wrecked against Big

Harcar Rock.

The boat itself split in two and sadly that meant that a lot of

the passengers and crew were immediately lost. But a small

group of survivors managed to climb off the bow of the ship

and onto the rock itself.

HELEN ANTROBUS: The Farne Islands are a group of 28

islands lying approximately five miles off the Northumberland

coast in the Northeast of England. They are a national

nature reserve and home to a breeding colony of seabirds and

Atlantic grey seals. Today, no one permanently inhabits the

islands.

However, their most famous former resident is Grace

Darling, a Victorian heroine, who becomes well known following

a daring sea rescue alongside her father. One stormy night in

1838. It's an event that was to change her life forever.

Have you ever imagined being a fly on the wall of history? Join

me for an inside view of the stories of people, places and

moments that made us.

I'm historian Helen Antrobus. Lean in for a tale from time

Back When.

As an island nation, the sea plays a role in all our lives.

From swimming, surfing and sailing to providing the fish to

go with our chips. It's hard to imagine life without the waves

that surround us. But with around 9,000 lifeboat launches

in the UK each year, the sea is also a very dangerous place and

while state-of-the-art technology is used in sea

rescues today, in the 19th century, things are very

different.

ANDREW LEWIS: In the early 19th century, the advent of steam

power has brought a huge increase in the amount of

shipping travelling around Britain and, along with that, a

huge increase in the number of wrecks.

In the 1830s, there's this kind of increasing sense of panic

amongst the population about the number of people being, being

lost at sea. For example, between 1833 and 1835, there's

over 1,500 vessels lost and at least another 100 reported as

missing.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Andrew Lewis is the Heritage Development Manager

at the Royal National Lifeboat Institution Grace Darling Museum

in Bamburgh, Northumberland.

ANDREW LEWIS: Before the creation of the Royal National

Institution For The Preservation Of Life From Shipwreck, which

later became the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, or RNLI,

in 1824, there wasn't really any coordination between independent

lifeboat efforts around the country. The institution itself

was the vision of Sir William Hillary.

He lived on the Isle Of Man and saw huge numbers of people being

lost at sea. So Hillary began trying to source enthusiasm and

money from those in positions to support it. So between

politicians and even members of the clergy. In 1824 they held

their first meeting. And started to pull together like-minded

people to drive this initiative forwards.

According to Hillary, at its heart, the institution was "a

large body of men" who were "in constant readiness to risk their

own lives for the preservation of those in extreme peril." And

of course, when Hillary wrote those lines, he wouldn't have

realised that just a few years later, it would be Grace

Darling, a young 22-year-old woman, who would be making

headlines for saving people from the sea.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Born in 1815, Grace Darling is the daughter of

a lighthouse keeper who works on the Farne Islands. And from the

age of just three weeks old, she lives in the lighthouse on

Brownsman Island in the Outer Farnes. At the age of 10, her

family moves to Longstone Lighthouse, the furthest out of

the Farne Islands.

ANDREW LEWIS: In 1825, a new lighthouse was built on

Longstone Rock, which is at the end of the Farne Islands. And as

the name suggests, it is literally a rock. With a

lighthouse built on top of it.

From this stage on, Grace was living on this lighthouse day

in, day out, and they didn't have anything immediately

surrounding them. It was just the sea. Living out on the end

of the Farne Islands, they were incredibly exposed.

Especially when the weather picked up, there'd be huge waves

crashing onto the lighthouse itself, so very remote

upbringing, very wild as well.

Grace was a very quiet, studious person, had a great sense of

duty and focused on caring for her family and those around her.

So typically day to day growing up Grace would have mainly

supported her mother with cleaning, but then increasingly

as time went on her brothers predominantly moved away from

the lighthouse.

She took an increasing role in supporting her father and his

work as the lighthouse keeper, so taking turns in keeping watch

if she was the only other person in the lighthouse.

HELEN ANTROBUS: The RNLI Grace Darling Museum is a treasure

trove of Grace's personal items, including letters, portraits and

even her clothing and locks of her hair. It also houses a model

of the Longstone Lighthouse. Grace is a skilled oarswoman.

She rows a Northumbrian coble, a big wooden boat and that coble

is also on display at the museum.

ANDREW LEWIS: It's quite a big, heavily constructed boat. It

probably weighs about half a tonne. 21 foot is very typical

to this part of the coast at the time. You'd kind of have three

or four people rowing it if the conditions were a bit rough.

Grace very much grew up exploring the Farne Islands and

travelling back and forth with her brothers and sisters and her

mum and dad, so it was kind of the equivalent of the family

car, really.

HELEN ANTROBUS: It was in the coble that Grace and her father

go to the aid of some of the crew and passengers of the

steamship, the Forfarshire.

ANDREW LEWIS: The SS Forfarshire was very modern, quite luxurious

paddle steamer. It was on the regular route from Hull to

Dundee twice a week. It was quite well thought of boat at

the time. It was well designed. The owners even thought perhaps

it might be unsinkable, which even led to them reducing the

insurance on the boat, which would unfortunately come back to

them later.

It was really well fitted out, which is why, as well as

attracting passengers for travelling for practical

reasons, to visit family or for work, they even had passengers

who would essentially be going for a cruise up the

north-eastern coast.

So on the 5th of September, the SS Forfarshire has left Hull on

its twice-weekly trip up to Dundee and sails up the coast as

it reaches the Farne Islands. One of the boilers springs a

leak. They've managed to effect a repair, essentially, and keep

the boat moving. They carry on and get almost as far as Berwick

when the boiler fails completely.

So at this point the captain rigs it for sail and tries to

seek shelter from the raising storm just off the Farne

Islands.

Unfortunately, the storm builds faster and stronger than he

expected, so there is a thought that he mistook one lighthouse

for another and ended up further out into the Farnes. He thought

he was sitting between the mainland and Inner Farne, but he

was actually looking at the Longstone Light. And so the ship

was washed into the rocks, into the Farne Islands, and was

eventually wrecked against Big Harcar Rock.

The boat itself split in two, and sadly that meant that a lot

of the passengers and crew were immediately lost. But a small

group of survivors managed to climb off the bow of the ship

and onto the rock itself.

HELEN ANTROBUS: That night, Grace is on watch in the

lighthouse, keeping an eye out for ships struggling in the

storm. At 5am, she looks out and realises she can see a ship

dashed against the rocks.

ANDREW LEWIS: Grace goes straight to her father and wakes

him up, and they look out. And he decides that at this point

it's too dark, the storm's too strong, there's nothing they can

do. At this point also they can't even see if there's any

survivors on the rock, they can just make out the shape of the

ship.

So they take a break and kind of have some breakfast and get

themselves ready and return at first light about seven o'clock

and look out again, and this is the first time they're able to

see there are some survivors clinging onto the rock for their

lives.

So this is the point which they have a discussion about what can

we do? Can we feasibly make a rescue at this stage? Grace's

father thinks it's impossible for the lifeboat from Seahouses

to make it out. It's too far, the storm's still too strong. So

they decide that the only possible hope these people on

the rocks have is for Grace and her father to put their own

lives at risk and to go out and try and save them themselves.

So with the help of Grace's mother, Thomasin, they launch

their coble and Thomasin waves them off on their rescue as they

row about a mile through these raging seas to get to Big

Harcar. They get there and find nine survivors on the rocks.

Sadly, three of the people that had escaped the wreck had died

on the rocks, including two children.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Grace's father climbs out of the coble onto the

rock to assist the survivors. Grace is left to hold the boat

on her own, a feat of incredible strength.

ANDREW LEWIS: So the waves would be trying to push Grace and the

boat onto the rocks. Of course, if she were to give in and let

that happen, then she and her father would join those

survivors on the rocks. There'd be no feasible way for them to

progress.

That constant pressure from the sea and the wind trying to push

her into the rocks and the amount of strength it must have

taken for her after miles rowing in the midst of a storm to keep

the boat away from the rocks was really incredible.

HELEN ANTROBUS: On the rock, it's obvious to Grace's father

they're not going to be able to take everyone back to the

lighthouse in one trip. So he commits to coming back to save

the rest of the survivors on the rock.

ANDREW LEWIS: He chooses a couple of the strongest crew to

come with him in order to be able to row back to save the

others. And then also those who are most at risk, injured, a

lady called Mrs Dawson, who was the mother of the two children

that had tragically died on the rocks.

So first five survivors climb into the boat with Grace and her

father and they all row back to Longstone. Grace and three of

the survivors stay at the lighthouse while William and the

two strongest crewmen he could find row back out into the storm

to rescue the remaining four.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Grace's bravery and incredible feats of strength

and endurance are so remarkable that she's still being

celebrated today. Many visitors take the popular boat tours

around the Longstone Lighthouse and pass by Big Harcar Rock each

year. Here's Nick Lewis. He looks after Cultural Heritage

For The National Trust on the Farne Islands.

NICK LEWIS: So almost two centuries after the rescue,

Grace Darling is still very fondly thought of around these

parts well remembered and celebrated. We still get school

visits to the Inner Farne, children who are studying Grace

as part of their topics at school because it's such a

powerful and compelling story that is really tied into the

islands here and the landscape around us.

And she's still celebrated here on the islands of course. We

even have a memorial to Grace on the Inner Farne in the chapel.

Which we can go and see now.

So we've just come into the monastic courtyard on Inner

Farne. This was a working monastery in the Middle Ages and

the chapel here on our right was built, we think, first in the

13th century, but the building that we see before us today was

slightly later in the 1370s.

So you can probably hear it's now an active nesting site for

Arctic Terns. So we can just head into the chapel now. We've

actually got a beaded curtain on the door to discourage the Terns

from coming in.

The first thing that really captures you when you come in is

the stained glass window which was installed during a Victorian

restoration of this chapel in the 1840s and of course this was

only a few years after the rescue that Grace enacted. She's

actually commemorated in the window in one of the rondels.

And it's one of the key things in this room, it's one of the

most vivid parts of this room.

It's a beautiful space but the colours of that window really

draw the attention and it's only fitting I suppose that Grace is

up there. It's not the only mention of Grace in the

building, a memorial dedicated to her which include a passage

from William Wordsworth's poem Grace Darling and there's one

particular detail I can read you here which was'pious and pure,

modest and yet so brave, though young so wise, though meek so

resolute.' And I think that sums Grace up really nicely. She was

very fond of the Farne Islands, she was particularly at home

here really, spent a lot of her life out here. And even after

her death her family would come to services in this very chapel.

It's a room and a space that's very much associated with the

Darling family.

HELEN ANTROBUS: The poetry and stained glass windows inspired

by Grace highlight how this unassuming young woman becomes a

historically important figure. Following the rescue, Grace

captures the public's imagination and is the focus of

Victorian Britain. Here's Andrew Lewis at the RNLI Grace Darling

Museum again.

ANDREW LEWIS: So immediately following the rescue, Grace

comes to the attention of the newspapers. Through the inquests

into what happened to cause the ship to be lost. They recognise,

firstly, what a good story this is. You're kind of in the age of

the penny a line, writers for newspapers at the moment, so

anything they can spin into the kind of dramatic, romantic story

would earn them more money.

But also the fact that it's an incredible feat of human

endurance. The story spreads very rapidly from local papers

in the North East, particularly around Berwick, to London and

then nationwide. This attracts attention from everywhere,

particularly from the very young Queen Victoria who's just come

to the throne. She sends a gift of £50, a huge sum in today's

money, to Grace and the family.

HELEN ANTROBUS: The gifts continue to pour in and so does

the attention. As well as requests for locks of her hair,

and fabric from the dress she was wearing during the rescue.

Grace receives items including a bonnet, sewing boxes and a

pocket watch.

Paintings are also commissioned of her.

ANDREW LEWIS: She sat for several portraits on the

lighthouse, many visiting artists coming to paint or draw

her. There was obviously an assumption that she'd be quite a

tall, broad person, having rowed out into these... Stormy seas.

So you find there's a little bit of variation amongst the

portraits, a little bit of artistic license. Some do lean

into that a little bit and make her a bit bigger than she

actually was. Every picture has a slightly different spin on her

appearance.

HELEN ANTROBUS: As well as sitting for portraits, a great

deal of Grace's time is spent writing thank you letters to

well-wishers.

ANDREW LEWIS: So there's a huge number of letters that are

written to Grace from all around the country, whether they're

just wishing her well, thanking her. Or offering gifts or

requesting gifts in return. Grace has this huge sense of

duty that she needs to respond to each and every one. She

doesn't really talk about the rescue much itself. She doesn't

go into any detail.

She's incredibly humble about the whole affair and feels that

she was in a position to go out and try and save these people so

she felt duty-bound that she should. There's a lovely quote

from one of her letters. "I had little thought of anything but

to exert myself to the utmost. My spirit was worked up by the

sight of such a dreadful affair that I can imagine I still see

the sea flying over the vessel."

HELEN ANTROBUS: Grace and her father are recognised for their

bravery with two medals.

ANDREW LEWIS: They were both given silver medals from what

became the RNLI, Grace being the first woman to receive an award

for gallantry from the RNLI and also gold medals from the Royal

Humane Society who provided awards for those that had helped

others.

This huge increase in notoriety and fame and all the people that

brought with it, people taking boat trips up the coast to kind

of see the Longstone Lighthouse and try and visit the Darling

family. It was incredibly intrusive and for a family that

had grown up in isolation, and particularly Grace, who was

quite a quiet, humble person, it was a completely alien sensation

and it was not something that she enjoyed at all.

It was very difficult for her, especially people coming to her

home where she didn't really have any refuge. It's a single

building in the middle of the sea, so there was no escape from

that attention.

HELEN ANTROBUS: In the end, the impact of Grace's fame has

tragic consequences, as meeting lots of people exposes her to a

deadly infectious disease.

ANDREW LEWIS: Sadly, on one of Grace's trips to the mainland,

she had picked up TB. Obviously, growing up in a lighthouse, she

was quite isolated from the population, so perhaps wouldn't

have had the best immune system. All the increase in well-wishers

travelling up to the region as well had perhaps brought...

TB from more urban areas where you'd usually find it. And yes,

sadly she had a long illness. After she failed to recover in

the lighthouse, she went up to Wooler nearby to the mountains

to see if the mountain air would help.

She then went to Alnwick to stay with the Duke and Duchess Of

Northumberland for a short while. But sadly, her condition

deteriorated and she came home to Bamburgh to die in her

uncle's cottage. This is particularly poignant because

it's just four years after the rescue. And she died at the very

young age of 26.

Grace remains in Bamburgh. She's buried in the family grave at St

Aidan's, just across the road from the museum. There were over

200 mourners came to her funeral. Shows how well she was

thought of in the local area. And a memorial was very quickly

erected in the churchyard, which looks out to sea with the...

Idea that she could be seen by passing sailors traveling up the

coast and she could be remembered by them.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Grace Darling is a great Victorian heroine. Her

part in the rescue puts the thought in the public's mind

that women just like men can be strong, courageous and risk

takers too. Grace's story is enduring. Her actions are as

inspiring today as they are in 1838, and her qualities live on

in our current lifeboat crews.

ANDREW LEWIS: We've got numerous female crew members up and down

the Northeast of England who cite Grace as a real inspiration

in them making a step into life-saving today. There have

been numerous lifeboats named after her. There's still one on

service, a D-Class at Seahouses, our nearest station.

Which is named for her. The organisation has now saved over

140,000 people at sea in its time, which means that as a

result of that there are four million lives that have been

lived because someone in the family tree has been saved by

the RNLI.

HELEN ANTROBUS: If you've enjoyed this episode, make sure

you follow, rate and review us on your favourite podcast app.

And if you Fancy visiting the RNLI Grace Darling Museum, go to

RNLI.org and search Grace Darling Museum for more

information. For visits to the Farne Islands, head to

nationaltrust.org.UK and search Farne Islands.

And if you'd like to see a mural of Grace Darling, search

Wallington. Thank you for listening to this and all our

Back When episodes. This is the last story of the series, but

we'll be back with a special episode next time for a look

behind the scenes with me, Helen Antrobus, and my co-host and

historian, James Grasby.

There's so much history content at the National Trust, from our

YouTube channel to great days out at your nearest heritage

sites. History and amazing stories are all around us every

day, just waiting to be unearthed. Thank you for

following Back When and see you next time.