Morecambe got its first inshore lifeboat in May 1966, part of a national push by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution after 1964 to put 25 small fast inflatables around the British coast — boats two or three crew could launch quickly when locals got into trouble. On the 4th of August 1973, in a southwest gale, two men were spotted on a small dinghy stuck on the Clark Wharf Sandbank northwest of Heysham Harbour. The lifeboat couldn't get close enough. Helm Keith Willacy went over the side with a lifeline. When his attempts to reach the men failed, he anchored the boat, veered it down with the wind, and brought them off. He received the RNLI Bronze Medal for that service. Just over nine years later, on the 17th of October 1982, the lifeboat was called to a windsurfer in trouble in Half Moon Bay during a southeast gale, with waves eight to nine feet high. The man had climbed 40 feet up a concrete marker pillar; he eventually had to jump into the sea to be rescued. Willacy was awarded the RNLI Silver Medal for that one. He became the most decorated crew member in Morecambe's history. He died in January 2018 at the age of 81.

The hovercraft is what makes Morecambe unusual among British lifeboat stations. A Griffon Type 470TD — modified for rescue work — was the RNLI's first operational life-saving hovercraft, placed at Morecambe on the 23rd of December 2002. Funded by Mrs Kay Hurley of Oxfordshire, it was officially named The Hurley Flyer at a ceremony in 2003. Temporary facilities for the hovercraft cost £64,883 in 2003. A permanent second station building was constructed to the west along the promenade in 2009 at a cost of £935,528. The reason the RNLI chose Morecambe is in the bay itself. On a falling tide, channels cut through the sands; on a rising tide, water races across flats that were dry minutes earlier. A boat in deep water cannot reach a person trapped on a sandbank that is not yet underwater. A boat cannot run across mud that will not yet float it. A hovercraft can do both. It glides over the in-between.

On the night of the 5th of February 2004, a group of 30 Chinese cockle pickers — most from Fujian province — were caught by the incoming tide on Warton Sands. They were working for an illegal gangmaster who had compelled them to gather cockles in dangerous conditions for almost nothing, with no real safety provision. A desperate 999 call came in from Guo Binglong, one of the workers, asking for help in broken English. Emergency services were alerted; Morecambe's lifeboat crews launched and did everything they could. The bay had already decided the outcome. Twenty-three people drowned that night, including Guo Binglong. The hovercraft, the inshore lifeboat, and shore helpers spent the hours afterwards recovering bodies as well as searching for survivors. The RNLI later issued a framed letter of thanks signed by Chairman Peter Nicholson to John Beaty, the lifeboat operations manager, and a second letter to all the crew and shore helpers. The gangmaster, Lin Liang Ren, was convicted of manslaughter in 2006 and jailed for 14 years.

A new boathouse with improved crew facilities and a souvenir shop went up on Marine Road Central in 1998, the kind of practical building that lets volunteers wash kit, run training, and turn out a crew on a winter night. The two-station arrangement that now exists — inshore lifeboat in the original boathouse, hovercraft in the 2009 building further west — reflects what Morecambe Bay actually requires. The work has never just been about people in dinghies who misjudged the wind. It has been about anyone walking out at low tide who underestimated how quickly the bay returns. The lifeboat crews are volunteers, neighbours, and the keepers of memorials that the families of those lost — including the Fujianese cocklers — never had the chance to build.