Includes photocopied correspondence and press cuttings concerning the 1849 South Shields Lifeboat Disaster, when 20 crew of the lifeboat PROVIDENCE drowned whilst trying to save the shipwrecked crew of THE BETSY, off the Herd Sand, at the entrance of the Tyne.

Administrative / biographical background
The 1849 Disaster at South Shields marked the culmination of a decade of decline for the National Insitution for Preservation of Life from Shipwreck. However, in 1850 its transformation began, with the competition to design a self-righting lifeboat, a new Inspector of Lifeboats, Captain (later Vice Admiral) John Ross Ward RN (Royal Navy), who designed the cork lifejacket, and new Committee of Management and the arrival of Richard Lewis, who was secretary 1850-1883.