RELIEF FLOODS MY heart at the sight of my brother huddled in the doorway, buffeted by the wind as he urges others behind him to hurry inside. While I hadn’t engaged in conversation with my fears for his safety, they had nagged and whispered to me over the past twenty-four hours. It is with much relief that I can finally silence them.
“Brooks! Thank goodness!” The kettle rattles against the hearth as I put it hastily down, rushing to him and throwing my arms around his neck, not minding the cold and damp that seeps instantly into the fabric of my dress. “You’re frozen.” Six other members of the North Sunderland lifeboat crew shake out their coats and hats behind him—William Robson the coxswain, and his brothers James and Michael; Thomas Cuthbertson; Robert Knox; William Swan—all of them soaked to the skin and shivering violently. “How did you all get here?” I ask, urging them to move closer to the fire.
Through chattering teeth, Brooks explains how they have come from Harker’s Rock. “We learned of the shipwreck, but found no survivors.” He glances around the cluttered room. “Though I see that you did.” Confusion clouds his face. “How, Grace?”
“You need to get dry and warm,” I say, taking his dripping coat. “There’ll be time enough for explanations.”
Mam flaps at her face with the end of her apron, so thankful to see her youngest boy safe. Although now a young man of nineteen years, Brooks will always be the baby of the family. Mam wraps a shawl around him, rubbing warmth into his back as I imagine she did when he was an infant. With so many burly men added to the already crowded room, Mam’s thoughts soon turn to the conundrum of where to put everybody. “Yis’ll have to be sittin’ on the floor,” she announces, throwing her hands in the air in exasperation. “I canna be conjuring chairs from thin air.”
Brooks calmly suggests that the lifeboat crew will take the empty outbuildings that were used by the workmen when Longstone was being constructed. “We’ll manage, Mam,” he assures her. “Trust me, after being out in that storm, we’d happily sleep on a bed of barnacles.”
Satisfied with the solution, Mam sets to preparing another pot of broth, her eyes wandering often to Brooks who shivers beside the fire. She is utterly in thrall of him and I am ashamed to feel a prick of jealousy as I observe her, knowing she will never look at me that way. Daughters never hold their mother’s affection the way their sons do. Daughters are dutiful, dependable and disposable. Sons are brave and admirable, essential to the continuation of the family line.
When the new arrivals are warm and fed to the best of our ability with the limited supplies that remain, questions and explanations are exchanged like cannon fire. My father and Brooks sit close together, sharing their stories of the previous hours. Brooks is especially astonished to learn of my part in the rescue.
“Grace handled the coble herself while I helped the survivors from the rock,” Father explains. “She coped admirably.”
In the moment, it sounds almost matter-of-fact, but I know that neither my father, nor I, will ever forget the feeling of dread as he stepped from the boat and walked away from me.
Brooks considers me with renewed respect as I refill his bowl. “Then I commend your bravery, sister. I know men twice your size who wouldn’t have considered going out in such seas.”
“Bravery doesn’t come into it,” I reply. “Father couldn’t go alone, and we couldn’t leave the survivors to perish. Anyone would have done the same in the circumstances.”
Brooks spoons broth hungrily into his mouth. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“She insisted,” Father adds. “And you know how stubborn your sister can be when she sets her mind to something. A child born in the year of the Battle of Waterloo is always ready to take up the fight. Isn’t that right, Gracie?” He takes my hand, pressing a smile into it to assure me of his teasing.
The truth is we are all as stubborn as each other. Life on a rock in the middle of the North Sea suits an obstinate personality. Being cut off from the mainland, entirely self-sufficient for weeks on end during bad weather, requires something different of a person. It is that difference which sees us through the long wind-lashed nights of winter storms when ships founder, and through the gray mornings which bring the bloated bodies of dead sailors lapping at the island’s stone beaches. There is no shame in being called stubborn. It is a necessity to survive.
My brother looks at me a little differently after hearing Father’s account of our rescue. I think, perhaps, he no longer sees me as the annoying big sister he’d teased for admiring her seashells, but sees—for the first time—the young woman I’ve become. A young woman in charge of her mind and her home. A young woman capable of matching the actions of any man, when the situation requires.
The hours pass quickly as I gather up heavy coats and sodden boots. I find dry blankets for the new arrivals, bank the fire, fetch water for the kettle, change makeshift dressings on wounds, and offer words of comfort and reassurance that we will get everyone back to the mainland as soon as possible. I ignore the dull headache that settles on my brow; ignore the ache in my limbs and the cold that seeps through my thin dress, all my shawls given to those who need them more. Only much later, when things are a little less frantic, do I take Brooks to one side and ask the question that has been on my mind since he arrived. Did they find any bodies on the rock?
“Three,” he confirms. “A reverend and two children. They’re secured on the highest part of the rock. We couldn’t get close enough to land the boat. As soon as the storm calms, we will remove them and take them to the Castle.”
“To Bamburgh?”
He nods. “There will be an inquiry. The coroner and jury will need to view the bodies.”
I motion to Sarah Dawson, who sits quietly beside the fire. “Their mother,” I whisper.
Brooks offers to tell her, but I shake my head. “I’ll tell her.” I feel responsible for Mrs. Dawson. The poor woman is so fragile I can’t bear for her to have to share her distress with anyone else. Taking a deep breath, my hands resting against my stomach, I walk across the room to her.
In many ways, the long hours I spent in the coble battling the heaving seas seem like a quiet scull around the island on a sunny day compared to the struggle I face as I crouch beside Sarah Dawson and look into her eyes. Being out in one of the worst storms we have ever known was certainly difficult. Telling a grieving mother that the bodies of her children, although safe, are still out in that storm, lashed by a relentless wind and hard rain, is by far the hardest thing I have ever done. I excuse myself after talking to her, retreating to my small bedroom where I finally let my tears fall and feel no better for having done so.
Over the course of the afternoon and evening, I catch snippets of conversation as my brother and the North Sunderland lifeboat crew coxswain, William Robson, give a full account to my father of events on the mainland. They explain how the lookout at Bamburgh Castle had seen the wreck and fired the cannons to let any survivors know they’d been seen. They describe how a fishing sloop had picked up nine survivors who’d escaped in one of the Forfarshire’s lifeboats and how Robert Smeddle—chief agent of the Bamburgh Castle Estate—had ridden to North Sunderland to alert the lifeboat crew. Brooks explains that they had taken a small fishing coble rather than the lifeboat, thinking it would be easier to manage in the rough seas, and how they’d rowed for nearly three hours against the swell. Finding no survivors at Harker’s Rock, he had proposed they shelter at Longstone until the storm passed. They had come ashore at an inlet south of the island and carried the coble across the rocks. “It is believed that forty-three passengers and crew were lost. The captain and his wife among them,” he concludes.
It is a sobering account.
“I’ll need to write up a report for Trinity House,” Father muses, thinking aloud as he rubs the whiskers on his chin. “There’ll be an inquest: questions to answer, people to hold accountable.”
Brooks nods his agreement. “Smeddle will take charge of that, no doubt.”
Mam tuts at the mention of Robert Smeddle. As the chief agent of the Trustees who govern the Bamburgh Castle estate, Smeddle is generally considered to be the most powerful man in Bamburgh. He also holds a degree of governance over the lighthouses along the Northumbrian coast and, as such, is well known to us. Well known, and not especially liked.
As the hours pass and the skies brighten a little, we learn that the survivors come from as far afield as London and Dundee, fate having brought them together to our sparse little island. A crewman, Mr. Donovan, is the most vocal of the group, turning the conversation repeatedly to one of accusation, talking about the captain being aware of a leaking boiler even before the ship left Hull. “Humble should have called in at Tynemouth for repairs. He has death on his hands, make no mistake.”
Father quietly suggests that Mr. Donovan be careful what he says and that such accusations would be better held back until the official inquiry into the disaster. “In any event,” he cautions, “Captain Humble has paid with his life for whatever decisions he made. Rather than apportioning blame, I think we would do much better to offer our prayers to those lost.”
As always, my father’s good sense prevails and he leads everyone in prayer, giving thanks for our food and shelter and for those whose lives were spared. “We pray, especially, for all the lost souls, especially little James and Matilda Dawson, who are in God’s arms now, and will remain forever in their mother’s heart.”
But despite Father’s admonishment, Mr. Donovan and the crewmen whisper among themselves in huddled groups and an uncomfortable air of tension settles between the lighthouse walls. Storms, it can shelter us from. Bad feelings, it cannot.
As the evening progresses, my body aches as it has never ached before, my mind too exhausted to think, and yet guilt and worry make for a restless bed that night, my mattress carrying the discomfort of all those below who sleep wherever they can find a place to lie. Nobody would hear of me giving up my bed, not even Sarah Dawson, who insisted she wouldn’t sleep anyway and would rather sit by the fire and wait for the morning. I know she thinks of her children. How could anyone rest in the circumstances?
I lie awake, listening to footsteps above as Father paces the service room, setting the boards creaking and cracking. He insisted he take the first watch through the small hours, anticipating another restless night with the storm still raging. I wonder how many more ships will founder on the unforgiving rocks of the Farne Islands while we keep the light here. With the shipping industry booming, I expect the Forfarshire will, sadly, not be the last.
The rush of the wind and the crash of waves become a curious lullaby as I release the emotions I’ve kept locked away. In the pitch dark of my room I stop being the brave lighthouse keeper’s daughter everyone believes me to be and allow myself to become who I really am; an exhausted young woman, greatly distressed by the events of the day. Like the sound of the sea trapped inside a conch shell, the events of the Forfarshire are forever part of me now.
DOWNSTAIRS, IN THE living quarters of the lighthouse, Sarah Dawson cannot sleep. She stares numbly into the fire as the embers fade and die. Everything must leave her it seems, even the warmth of the flames.
The men all sleep easily, snoring wherever they have found a place to rest: chairs, benches, rugs. She envies them the escape of sleep while she must stay awake with only her anguish for company. The storm batters the island outside and she cannot rest, even though her body is bruised and exhausted.
Taking up the plaid shawl Miss Darling had kindly given her for warmth, she slips quietly outside. The strength of the wind almost knocks her over and she clings to the white lighthouse walls, feeling her way around it in the dark as her skirts and the shawl flap wildly against her. She isn’t sure of her plan, of what she will do next, but there is something pure about the energy of the storm and she feels oddly calm amid its fury, her grief spoken for her by the violent wind. Her tears match the multitude of raindrops that soon soak her to the skin. Let it tear me apart, she thinks. Let it finish what it has started.
She wants to scream and shout. She wants to become the storm, but she cannot and as she opens her mouth all she can do is sink to her knees and weep inconsolably with the wind. Her legs cannot support her. Her heart cannot cannot endure this. She doesn’t know how long she stays there.
Mr. Buchanan, having stirred from his slumber and noticed Mrs. Dawson missing, finds her outside, barely conscious. Like an infant, he carries her in his arms and sits her beside the fire, which he stokes until the flames lick hungrily again. He tells her the pain will go away. “It’ll blow itself out. Like the storm. It will come to an end eventually.”
But she cannot believe him and the storm howls wildly in response, as if to confirm that she is right not to.
North Sunderland, England
After a long and difficult journey, George Emmerson arrives in Bamburgh, from where he is directed to the small harbor town of North Sunderland, but he does not find his sister in any smoky tavern or in private lodgings or fisherwomen’s cottages. All he finds are hushed voices and clouded faces and dark tales of a vessel tragically lost. The only fragment of hope he can find is in the survival of several crewmen who, he is told, escaped in one of the Forfarshire’s own lifeboats. Everyone else, they say, is believed lost. But until he has confirmation, until someone in a position of authority can tell him with absolute certainty, he refuses to give up hope. He feels Sarah, still. Senses she is alive. As for the children, he cannot tell.
He takes a room at the Olde Ship Inn on the quayside. On a clear day, the owner tells him, you can see the Farne Islands from the upstairs rooms. It is of no comfort. It is agony to be so close to where Sarah might be, and yet he cannot get to her, nor she to him, the seas too violent for any ship or boat to set out in either direction.
He cannot sleep, cannot settle while the storm tugs at the window and sends his thoughts skittering about like blown autumn leaves. He reflects on how carefree he was only days ago, how happy he’d been at the prospect of Sarah’s visit, and how captivated he had been by the young woman he’d discovered among the sand dunes and with whom he had conversed about sea dragons and sea glass. How quickly things change.
His fascination with Grace Darling seems suddenly childish; immature and foolish. Unimportant. Through the clutter and tumble of his concern for Sarah, he can hardly remember what Miss Darling looked like, certain he has remembered her wrong in his reckless sketching.
Through the long night, he tosses and turns and for the first time in many days he wishes Eliza were there to comfort him. She would know what to say. She would place a cool hand on his forehead and tell him not to worry so. She is a good woman and deserves better than for him to spend his days turning over images of another in his mind. Life has sent a harsh reminder of the cruel twists it can deliver at a moment’s notice. As he lies fully clothed on the straw mattress, poised to run out should any word be sent, it occurs to George that rather than dwelling on a woman he knew for only a moment, he should get on with the business of marrying the woman he has known all his life.
He sits up, hastily scribbling a letter to Eliza to express his love for her, explaining how he has taken a coach to North Sunderland in hope of finding Sarah and the children. But the words sound hollow when he reads them back and with the fire dying in the grate he uses the page to set it going again, wondering about life going in many directions, and the wrong direction, all at the same time. The wind keeps him awake until dawn, when he eventually dozes.
He awakes, midmorning, to a curious calm. Without taking any breakfast, he sets out into the winding narrow streets, knocking on unfamiliar doors and stopping harried-looking women going about their business. He explains that he is desperate for any word of his sister and her children, believed lost in the wreck of the Forfarshire, but they cast their eyes to their feet and shake their heads. They can tell him nothing of a Sarah Dawson and her children. Nothing at all.