EVEN those who know the Life-boat Service will find very much to interest them in How Men are Rescued from the Sea by Patrick Howarth (Routiedge and Kegan Paul, 10s. 6d.), as it des- cribes, briefly and swiftly, all the services which guide, advise, warn—and if the worst comes to the worst—rescue those who, by sea or air, approach and leave the shores of the British Isles. There is Trinity House to look after light- houses and buoys ; the Coastguard to warn ships in peril, to pass on the news of wrecks, to help those within rocket- reach of the shore ; the Post Office, in charge of the wireless stations, to receive calls from ships at sea ; the Navy and Air Force to search and rescue from the air ; the Life-boat Service to rescue from the sea.

It all looks impossibly complicated —six separate services, all under differ- ent control, but all engaged in different parts of the same work ; and Mr.

Howarth deliberately makes it look more absurd by pointing out that Trinity House's first job was to look after pilots, that the Coastguard began as a police to catch smugglers, that the Navy and Air Force are now responsible for rescues from the air because, in the war, they had to provide a rescue service for themselves. And what has the Post Office, which brings us our letters, to do with those in peril at sea ? Anyone who sat down in his study to design a sea-rescue service would certainly produce something much simpler, much more elegant, something that looked much more workable. But the British have never liked paper constitutions, and those different services had one great practical advantage. They were on the spot.

They all had local knowledge and experience to draw on.

Not Planned in the Study It is odd that only one of those six services which was deliberately, and carefully, planned, was the most im- portant of them all, the Life-boat Service, and it was planned with such understanding and imagination that it is today, in its essentials, as it was i planned nearly a century and a half ago.

Can that be said of any other organisa- tion ? But it was not planned in the study. It must have been planned unconsciously, while the founder of the service was in the press and heat of the actual work of rescue.

So, when Mr. Howarth asks the question " Why is there not some central body whose exclusive concern it should be to render the seas safe, and rescue those in danger," he has his answer ready and clear : " Efficient services of all kinds tend to grow up gradually according to an historical logic of their own. It is the essence of wise administration to take advantage of their growth." No Organisation and No Name Mr Howarth has rightly kept for his peroration those who have no organisa- tion and no name, who carry out what the Institution calls shore-boat services.

He has put them at the end, although, historically, they belong to the beginning.

Men did it before there was a Life-boat Service. If they had not done it we should probably have had to wait much longer for the service, and it would probably have been a different service from what it is. Mr. Howarth has a very interesting quotation from the journal of a ship wrecked on the Cornish coast in the middle of the 18th century, a coast where, at that time, " persons assembled by thousands " to plunder wrecks. The ship's journal says : " The inhabitants of St. Ives flocked down in numbers to our assistance, and, at the risk of their own lives, saved ours." They were there then, they are there still, those who do not telephone to the police when they see men in peril at sea, but launch whatever boat is to hand ; risk their own lives—some- times give their own lives—to rescue them.

It is that persistent and permanent spirit in individual men which makes services grow in Mr. Howarth's phrase " according to an historical logic of their own," and he has given us not only an excellent account of six separate services working harmoniously together, each according to its own historical growth, but an illuminating essay on the spirit and way in which the peoples of the British Isles like to do things.

The book is one of the How Series, a series intended to tell the intelligent young how all sorts of things are done, from how a book is made to how Parliament works.

CHARLES VINCE.

Sea Surgeon by James Hall (William Kimber, 25s.) is the robustly written and colourful account of the war-time experiences of a remarkable doctor, who was continually going out in life-boats and other small boats to the help of seamen of many nationalities off the coast of Kent. During the war he answered nearly three hundred calls and brought treatment to between seven and eight hundred sick or in- jured seamen.

Much of the book is devoted to the help Dr. Hall received from members of the Walmer life-boat crew, to whom he pays a deeply felt tribute, when he writes in his foreword : "I have, as yet, found no limit to the physical endurance of the crew who man the Walmer life- boat. Human gratitude speaks in many languages and I have had more than my share. They have mine." Dr. Hall was not an experienced sea- man when he started his war-time work, but in time he came to be known as " the doctor who attended ships." Gradually he became a more and more integral part of the Walmer crew, and he describes as a high compliment the invitation extended to him to act as an ordinary member of the crew to help bring back the life-boat from Lowestoft, where she had been taken for repairs after the evacuation from Dunkirk.

Menace of Mines Despite the menace of mines, the difficulties of the black-out, lack of sleep and food and the problems of communicating through the language barrier, Dr. Hall was at all times ready to help seamen in the Downs. Yet he had to carry on his normal practice, share with other doctors a rota system for air-raid and shelling casualties, and frequently do X-ray work after midnight.

There are in the book some interesting practical hints on medical treatment at sea, and on methods of transferring the injured. But to those with an intimate knowledge of life-boats some of Dr. Hall's comments may come as a surprise, for example, his statement that the hull of the Walmer life-boat " contains a built-in iron ladder to enable survivors to sit on the keel if she turns over." Eyebrows might also be raised at the statement that "life-boat crews are supposed to wear a kind of cork life-jacket under dangerous conditions." Nevertheless, as a story of devoted service vividly told the book can certainly be com- mended. P.H.

The Life-boat Fish by Dora Broome (Hamish Hamilton Antelope Books, 6s. 6d.), is designed to appeal to very young readers, and tells the adventures of the hero, aged eight, with a life-boat fish, who is a collecting box by day, but becomes alive at night. The hero and the fish attend a naming ceremony of a new life-boat, the boy actually naming the boat himself.

There are some useful comments on the desirability of contributing to the life-boat collecting boxes. M.H.

Storm-Tide by Angus MacVicar, is a one-act play telling the story of a life- boat service and is set in an imaginary station in Scotland. The dialogue is lively and the suspense felt by those on shore is well conveyed, although the antipathy shown by the coxswain's wife to life-boat service as a whole is some- thing which this reviewer has not personally experienced.

The play was originally performed by the Dunaverty Players, and branches which wish to perform it should apply to the author's agents, Messrs. Brown, Son and Ferguson Ltd., 52 Darnley Street, Glasgow, S.I.

Storm-Tide, published at Is. 6d., is dedicated to Coxswain Duncan New- lands, of Campbeltown, who checked the technical details. P.H..