On September 7, 1838, the steamship Forfarshire bound for Dundee from Hull ran into problems with its boilers. The engine room flooded just as a storm was brewing, and as the Forfarshire rounded the Farne Islands, off the Northumbrian coast, the engines failed and the ship was left drifting in gale-force northerly winds. At around 3am, the steamer ran aground on rocks and broke in two; 42 passengers and crew drowned. But several survivors climbed off the wreck on to a rock, lashed by winds and waves in bitter cold.

Not far away was the Longstone lighthouse, and at daybreak the lighthouse keeper’s 22-year-old daughter, Grace Darling, spotted the wrecked ship and the survivors huddled on the rock. She woke her father, William, and they rowed a boat through the towering waves for a mile to the rock. While Grace kept the boat steady, her father rescued five of the survivors and rowed back to the lighthouse. He then returned with two of the survivors to rescue the remaining four people.

News of the rescue caused a sensation and captured the nation’s admiration. Grace’s bravery and stamina were commemorated in pictures, posters, on china and chocolate boxes. William Wordsworth even wrote a poem, Grace Darling, in her honour:

. . . every hazard faced
And difficulty mastered, with resolve
That no one breathing should be left to perish,

This last remainder of the crew are all
Placed in the little boat, then o’er the deep
Are safely borne, landed upon the beach.

The Darlings were awarded medals and Queen Victoria donated money to them. Grace became an icon for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, and their Grace Darling museum at Bamburgh features the original boat used in the rescue.