Grace Bussell

The early morning of this day 132 years ago was an exhausting one for the passengers on the Georgette, a ship bound for Adelaide. Just after midnight the ship had sprung a leak, and by 4am most of the passengers had buckets and were bailing. At 6am the boiler room was flooded, and the ship was foundering in heavy seas just off the West Australian coast. A lifeboat with 20 passengers was smashed against the hull as it was being lowered, breaking it in two and sending all passengers into the sea. A second lifeboat picked up most of the passengers, but two women and five children were lost.

Shortly after dawn, an aborginal stockman, Sam Isaacs, noticed the plight of the ship, and rode 20 kilometres to Wallcliffe House, the homestead of the Bussell family, to raise the alarm. The 16-year-old Grace Bussell returned to the scene on horseback with Sam, and they rode their horses down the steep cliffs and out into the surf, past the second line of breakers, to reach the ship. Then, with as many people as possible clinging to the horses, they returned to shore.

Grace’s horse stumbled over a rope at one point and she was nearly lost, but she and Sam kept going until all 50 passengers had been rescued. The rescue took four hours. Grace and Sam were awarded Royal Humane Society medals for the bravery. A young pastoralist, Frederick Drake-Brockman, was so impressed by the story that he rode 300 kilometres from Perth to meet Grace, and six years later he married her.