Volunteer Life Brigade

A Volunteer Life Brigade is a search and rescue organisation which assists HM Coastguard in the United Kingdom in coastal emergencies.

Around 40 VLBs were established in the mid-to-late 19th century; today just three remain, continuing to provide shore-based search and rescue support from locations on the coast of north-east England.

The first unit, at Tynemouth, was established on 5 December 1864 following a series of shipwrecks on the shoreline in which crewmembers perished watched by spectators ashore who were powerless to help.

The Volunteer Life Brigades were shore-based organisations, trained in ship-to-shore (e.g. Breeches buoy) rescue techniques; they worked in conjunction with those providing a seaborne rescue capability, such as the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (which had received its Royal Charter a few years earlier) and local Lifeboat Societies (Tynemouth's dated from 1789).

[1] The three remaining VLBs are all registered charities and both Tynemouth and South Shields are "declared facilities" in relation to the Maritime and Coastguard Agency.