Lotted No 1 by Tennants of North Yorkshire and sold on May 28, was an item that has graced this column in the distant past – a plate commissioned by the Dundee & Hull Steam Packet Company depicting the Dundee-built steamer Forfarshire.
Circa 1834, the year of her launch, printed in sage green and 10 inches in diameter, the plate shows the company’s coat of arms below the ship at sea.
On the evening of 5 September 1838, Forfarshire left Hull bound for her home port of Dundee with a mixed cargo of cloth, hardware and soap and around 60 passengers and crew, many of them people from the city.
Sailing into history
But fate saw her sailing into history – and numerous Dundee bairns left fatherless.
At 4 o’ clock in the morning, the ship ran aground at the Farne Islands, off Northumberland.
She began to break up, one section carrying the captain and several cabin passengers to their deaths.
Nine men made it into a lifeboat and were later rescued. But the forward part of the ship remained jammed and, when daybreak came, 11 survivors clambered on to the rock.
The heroine Grace Darling
The rest is history. Woken by the storm, 22-year-old Grace Darling and her lighthouse keeper father William twice rowed out to the wreck and eventually managed to rescue nine of the party.
The story of one of England’s greatest heroines continues to resonate.
The plate is from a wider service, all of which carries a representation of the ill-fated vessel. The service was made for the ship’s owners by the Rockingham Works of Rotherham.
Offered without estimate, the plate was knocked down for £1300.
