|
More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
|
Grace Darling
|
|
(1815–42) Having grown up in the lighthouse kept by her father on Longstone, one of the most remote of the treacherous Farne Islands off the coast of Northumberland, she became a national heroine after a dramatic exploit in 1838. Grace rowed with her father through tumultuous seas to rescue survivors from the steamboat Forfarshire, who were stranded on a rock. Her instant fame led to more requests for locks of her hair than nature could reasonably provide. She made several expeditions to the mainland; but she always came back, in the words of the *Dictionary of National Biography, 'with such reports of the outer world as deterred her from marriage'. The boat she used is preserved in the *RNLI memorial museum in *Bamburgh.
|
|
|
|