Books by Vice-Admiral Gordon Campbell and Commander H. B. Baothby.

Brave Men All. By Vice-Admiral Gordon Campbell, V.C., D.S.O. (Hodder & Stoughton, 7s. 6d. net).

Spunyarn. By Commander H. B.

Boothby, D.S.O., R.N.R. (Foulis, 5*.

net).

THESE two books should interest every- one who is interested in the life-boat service. They are full of stirring stories of daring and adventure, danger and rescue at sea.

No man has a better claim than Admiral Campbell to write of courage ; himself the holder of the highest honours which courage in war can earn —the Victoria Cross and the Dis- tinguished Service Order. Having proved his own courage and resource at sea in war, he writes here of the courage of men at sea in time of peace. His chief difficulty must have been in deciding what to leave out, and he has made a fine and most varied choice of acts of gallantry all over the seven seas, from Great Britain to China, and from the Arctic to the Antarctic.

Three Great Names.

The life-boat service is very well represented by men and deeds which show its courage and skill at their highest. Admiral Campbell gives short accounts of the gallantry of the three men who have won the greatest honours from the Institution: Sir William Hillary, who three times won the gold medal, Lieut. J. Bulley, R.N., of the coastguard, and Coxswain Henry Blogg, of Cromer, who have each won two gold and two silver medals. His choice of life-boat services could not be better—the services to the Indian Chief, the Georgia, the Isabo and the Excel—and he gives of them all full and most graphic accounts. They show the infinite variety of the hazards of the sea round our coast and the unvarying skill and courage with which the life-boat service meets them.

Commander Boothby was the honor- ary secretary of the Grimsby life-boat station from 1911 until it was closed in 1927. He is now the chairman of the Littlehampton branch. He has won nearly every honour which the Insti- tution can give an honorary worker— its inscribed binoculars, its gold badge and its thanks on vellum. This year he received the highest honour of all—an honorary life-governorship. He brought to his work for the life-boat service the most varied experience of the sea.

At the age of fifteen he sailed as appren- tice on a full-rigged ship to Australia, and went all round the world under sail; joined the P. & O., and rose to be captain of a steamer of the Canadian Pacific. Then he became a fishery officer on the north-east coast, and on the outbreak of warin!914 he joined the navy at the age of fifty-one. He served in mine-sweepers, was twice blown up by mines, and was the first officer of the merchant navy to win the D.S.O. This book is the story of his adventures.

Wreck of an Emigrant Ship.

He brought to the hardships and hazards of the sea a gay impertinence and a ready resource which carried him safely through many dangers and which make his story most entertaining to read. Of his many adventures the one which must have tried him most was the wreck of his steamer, with 500 emigrants on board, on the rocky coast of Nova Scotia on a December night, in a whole gale, with snow.

His vivid story of that wreck, of the panic among the emigrants, and how he quieted them, of the long wait until day (there was, as he says, " no Royal National Life-boat Institution there, with their wonderful fleet of boats and their ever-watchful eyes "), and of the rescue of those on board, without the loss of a life, is a notable addition to the many gallant stories of wreck and rescue at sea.

Commander Boothby has very kindly offered to autograph copies of his book for any who will send a contribution to the Institution..