[2] Ever since its founding in 1824, the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck (RNIPLS), later to become the RNLI in 1854, would award medals for deeds of gallantry at sea, even if no lifeboats were involved.

On 25 November 1835, the RNIPLS Silver Medal was awarded to farmer Pat Coffey, when he rode his horse out in the surf, to get a line to the French schooner Les Deux Soeurs, wrecked in Tramore Bay on passage from Nice to Rouen.

[1][3][4] The vessel Prince Regent was wrecked in Tramore Bay on 22 June 1839, whilst on passage from Newport, Wales to New York, Coastguard boatman John Weblin swam out through the surf, to get a line to the ship, and all 40 crew and passengers were saved.

[1][4][5] When the French vessel Capricieux ran aground at Tramore on 25 January 1858, whilst on passage from Llanelli to Saint-Malo, one crew man was lost, and two local fishermen, John Fitzgerald and Thomas Crotty, were drowned, when their small boat capsized while trying to effect a rescue.

The area around the old boathouse at Lady Elizabeth's Cove was later protected, when a new pier of grey limestone slabs with a concrete capping was built in 1907, with a north wall added later.

[15] In 1964, in response to an increasing amount of water-based leisure activity, the RNLI placed 25 small fast Inshore lifeboats around the shores of the UK and Ireland.