Amazing Grace: artist’s tribute casts new light on Victorian rescue heroine

Grace Darling's role in saving the survivors of a shipwreck off Northumberland is to be commemorated on the anniversary of the feat

A ferocious gale blew across the north-east coast of Britain on the night that made Grace Darling a star of popular history. She was to become a beacon of bravery for the Victorians when she set out in a small rowing boat to help the distressed passengers of the sinking SS Forfarshire.

Now she is to be celebrated with a large art installation in Northumberland, commissioned by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) museum that bears her name.