The first life-boat station in Britain and, there are good reasons for believing, in the world, was established at Bamburgh in the late eighteenth century - Grace Darling's birthplace. From Bamburgh Castle, a charitable trust established after Bishop Crewe's death in 1721, operated to render help in cases of shipwreck. In 1786 contact was made with a London coachbuilder to adapt a small coble and it served for a number of years at Bamburgh. While he was converting existing boats, however, the men of Tyneside seem not to have been aware of it.
William Wouldhave was born in Liddle Street, North Shields in 1751, where he served his apprenticeship as a house painter. He then moved across the Tyne to South Shields, where he became well known as a tall, brusque, rather uncouth eccentric. His many inventions included a clock and an electrical machine and he also proposed the sloping of dry dock walls to give the workmen more light.
Before the piers were built, the Tyne was a treacherous port to enter and many ships came to grief. The design for the world's first lifeboat resulted from a competition organised by a group of South Shields 'gentlemen' after the dramatic wreck of the Adventure in the Tyne in 1789, less than 300 yards from the shore (a large crowd witnessed the deaths of the crew as they dropped from the rigging).
Of the designs submitted, the final choice lay between those of William Wouldhave and Henry Greathead, a boatbuilder. Neither was considered wholly satisfactory by the adjudicating committee. Wouldhave angrily rejected the one guinea compensation, but Greathead returned with a new model which embodied all the features of Wouldhave's design, with the exception of the keel, which Greathead had cambered. This was accepted by the committee, which commissioned him to build it. Greathead subsequently claimed the title of 'lifeboat inventor'. The Original was launched on 30 January 1790 and served for 40 years, saving countless lives. She was indeed the first in the world to be designed and constructed purely as a lifeboat. Greathead boats were used to pioneer life-saving services round Britain's coasts and remained the backbone of the lifeboat fleet for fifty years, until the development of self-righting types. When South Shields became a municipal borough in 1850-51, the lifeboat became the central emblem in the new town's coat of arms.
Wouldhave never received the acclaim he had richly deserved and died in South Shields, poor and neglected on 28 September 1821. Greathead seems not to have prospered and is thought to have died in London In 1816. Tynemouth Volunteer Life Brigade at Tynemouth had the first ship to shore rescue service in the world.