From the start the Volunteer Life Brigades worked closely with local Coastguard officers, providing trained and disciplined teams of volunteers to assist in emergency situations; training was overseen by HM Coastguard. 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).