Lily Craven@TheAttagirls
Woman of the Day Jane Whyte, born in 1844 in Aberdeenshire, a crofter’s wife and mother of nine who was walking her dog along New Aberdour beach when she spotted the SS William Hope drifting helplessly toward jagged rocks after its engine failed and its anchor chain snapped OTD in 1884.
The SS William Hope was an iron steam trawler built in Dundee. It left Fraserburgh for Burghead, carrying only ballast for a routine voyage with a crew of 15, but just off Troup Head (now Scotland's only mainland gannet colony), a sudden hurricane-force gale struck. The trawler headed for shelter in Aberdour Bay when the engine cut out. There was no lifeboat nearby and the crew were stranded in freezing, churning waves in violent winds.
They threw out a lifeline.
Jane dashed into the sea to grab it but it fell short so she waded in even deeper, seized it, wrapped it around her waist and hauled it to shore. Planting her feet "firm as a rock" in the gravel, withstood the pounding surf and held the line as each battered and exhausted sailor clambered hand-over-hand to safety, one by one. It took more than two grueling hours but she never gave up.
She then sheltered the shivering men overnight in her croft, providing warmth, food and solace until they could return to Dundee.
Jane’s heroism earned her the RNLI's silver medal—the institution's highest honour—and a Board of Trade bronze medal plus a £10 reward (roughly £1083 today). She used it to buy her rented croft and fund her children's education.
The SS William Hope was sold for scrap.
This remarkable woman died on 3 August 1918, aged about 74. One of the rescued sailors wrote a poem about her that included these lines”
"Against the terrible death she stood, / A beacon amid the flood."
