Brewer's: Grace Darling

daughter of William Darling, lighthouse-keeper on Longstone, one of the Farne Islands. On the morning of the 7th September, 1838, Grace and her father saved nine of the crew of the Forfarshire steamer, wrecked among the Farne Isles, opposite Bamborough Castle (1815-1842). Wordsworth has a poem on the subject.

The Grace Darling of America.

Ida Lewis (afterwards Mrs. W. H. Wilson, of Black Rock, Connecticut). Her father kept the Limerock lighthouse in Newport harbour. At the age of eighteen she saved four young men whose boat had upset in the harbour. A little later she saved the life of a drunken sailor whose boat had sunk. In 1867 she rescued three men; and in 1868 a small boy who had clung to the mast of a sailboat from midnight till morning. In 1869 she and her brother Hosea rescued two sailors whose boat had capsized in a squall. Soon after this she married, and her career at the lighthouse ended.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894

Grace Days

Grace Cup