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Updated: May 1, 2025
The heroic young girl insisted only that she would remain on the reef till the skiff, which could only take half of the company, returned for the remainder. God rewarded her faith and courage. All those who had been wrecked on the frightful reefs of Longstone were saved, and brought in safety into the small dwelling of the lighthouse.
For, besides the danger of swamping, and the comparatively weak arm of an inexperienced woman at the oar, the passage from the Longstone to the wreck could only be accomplished with the ebb-tide; so that unless the exhausted survivors should prove to be able to lend their aid, they could not pull back again to the lighthouse.
The romantic circumstances of this rescue, the isolated position of the girl, her youth and modesty, and the self-devoting heroism displayed upon this occasion, thrilled through the length and breadth of the country like an electric shock, and the name of Grace Darling became for the time as well known as that of the greatest in the land, while the lonely lighthouse on the Longstone became a point of attraction to thousands of warm admirers, among whom were many of the rich and the noble.
It was a very dangerous thing to attempt, but he did it, she going with him. "Both father and daughter were very strong and skilful, and by exerting themselves to the utmost they succeeded in saving nine of the poor wrecked creatures who were crouching there on the rocks in momentary expectation of being washed off by the raging waves and drowned. They bore them safely to Longstone."
The Longstone is only about four feet above high-water mark, so that in stormy weather the lighthouse is fiercely assailed by the heavy seas, and the keepers are often driven for refuge to the upper chambers. To the Longstone might with truth be attributed the opening lines of Kipling's poem, "The Coastwise Lights":
The islet of Farne and a cluster of other rocks off shore add to the dangers, and on some of them there are lighthouses. One of these rocks Longstone Island Grace Darling rendered memorable by her intrepidity in perilling her life during the storm of September, 1838.
Grace, who was the seventh of nine children, was born in 1815, in Bamborough, and when she was a little girl of eleven years her father was given charge of the new light on Longstone Rock, which was one of a series of dangerous reefs where no vessel ever built could live when a gale was blowing.
Grace loved to contemplate the indented coast of Northumberland, and to see with her naked eyes, of a clear day, the little hamlet where she was born; it was not that she regretted the fertile soil, the verdure, the wood she had seen when she was little. No! the Isle of Longstone, did it not contain in its rocky bosom what was dearest to Grace? Her sympathy extended, however, far beyond.
Her father was the keeper of Longstone Light, and on the night of September 6 the Forfarshire steamer, proceeding from Hull to Dundee, was wrecked there.
But the most attractive thing of all to the young folks because of the story connected with it was Grace Darling's boat. It was the captain who pointed it out to his children. "Who was she, papa? and what did they put her boat here for?" asked little Elsie. "She was the daughter of William Darling, the lighthouse keeper on Longstone, one of the Fame Islands." "Where are they, papa?"
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