Grace Darling

Grace Horsley Darling (* November 24, 1815 in Bamburgh, Northumberland, † October 20, 1842 ibid ) was the daughter of the English lighthouse keeper William Darling, who gained national prominence because of their commitment during a shipwreck.

Wreck of the SS Forfarshire

On September 7, 1838 Grace Darling watched through a window of the lighthouse on Longstone the Farne Islands. They discovered the steamer SS Forfarshire, which crashed due to a storm. The ship smashed on the rocks and broke. Since Darling and her father einschätzten the weather as too violent for the use of the lifeboats from Bamburgh and North Sunderland, they opted for a bailout by rowboat. Using their lives, they were able to rescue nine castaways of the steamboat before death, a further nine survived as well. Appreciated another 43 people could not be saved.

Appreciation

Grace Darling gained due to their rescue at the wreck of the SS Forfarshire national prominence and will be honored up to the present. For your use, it was among other things by the National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck: awarded the Silver Medal for Bravery (now the Royal National Lifeboat Institution ). Since 1938, her story is displayed in a museum in Bamburgh.

Shortly after her death, The Grace Darling Memorial was erected in the cemetery at Bamburgh. The poet William Wordsworth dedicated her 1843 poem Grace Darling.