These items are two copies William Darling’s report to Mr. Herbert, Trinity House, London, in which he described the wreck of the SS Forfarshire on Harker’s Rock, one of the Farne Islands. One draft is signed ‘W Darling’, and the other is unsigned, but dated ‘6 October 1838’.
By 1838 William Darling, then aged 52, had been a lighthouse keeper on the Farnes for some years, having begun as an assistant to his father, Robert, at the light on Brownsman until he succeeded him there as keeper in 1815.