THE first in a series of books which will undoubtedly become standard works on the history of the Cornish fife-boats. Wreck and Rescue Round the Cornish Coast by Cyril Noall and Grahame Farr (D. Bradford Barton, 2is.), is both an admirable piece of scholarship and a most readable work. In this first volume the authors tell the stories of the life-boat stations at Bude, Port Isaac, Padstow, Newquay and Hayle.

They are particularly interesting on the history of the Padstow station, yet in spite of all their research they are unable to state with certainty when the station was founded. Although they hold the view that the first Padstow life-boat was built in 1827 they call attention to the fact that this Institution's records state that the station was established before 1825, although the Institution's annual report for the year 1824-1825 mentions a life-boat being "planned" for the Padstow district. There was, it seems, a six-oared gig built as early as 1790 largely for rescue on the north Cornish coast, but this was not truly a life-boat.

In the authors' words "the pilots scorned the addition of aircases and cork".

FUTURE KING CONTRIBUTED TO THE COST The Padstow life-boat built in 1855 cost £160. Towards this sum the future King Edward VII contributed £25, and he gave permission for the life-boat to be named Albert Edward. Padstow also had one of the few steam life-boats built for the Institution and a 6i-foot motor life-boat named in July, 1930, which, apart from one boat stationed at Dover, was the largest motor life-boat hitherto completed.

Colourful accounts, a number of them extracted from local newspapers, describes early happenings at other stations. When a life-boat was first placed at Port Isaac one of the first actions taken was to capsize her deliberately with her crew on board in order to show that she could become upright "in less than a minute and free of water in a few seconds". The daughter of the chairman of the local committee then named the boat but before doing so placed below the foundation stone of the boathouse a bottle containing coins and documents.

When the first life-boat arrived at Newquay it was reported that of the local population, then numbering less than one thousand, all who could walk trooped out to meet her.

LIFE-BOAT MANNED BY OXFORD CREW Hayle's first life-boat was provided by a fund collected at the University of Oxford, and in April, 1866, after being drawn on her carriage through the principal streets of Oxford, she was taken to the towing path of the river and manned by the Oxford boat race crew, who not long before had defeated Cambridge. The wife of the Vice-Chancellor then named the life-boat Isis.

Mr. Noall and Air. Farr have many moving accounts of rescues carried out by the different life-boats at these north Cornish stations, and all too often among the accounts of successful rescues are tales of life-boat disasters. Of the consequence of a disaster at Padstow in 1867 they rightly comment: "As is almost always the case after a life-boat disaster, there was no lack of volunteers to make up a fresh crew." The next two volumes of this series will deal first with the life-boat stations in the Lands End area and then those on the south Cornish coast.

There are a number of excellent illustrations in this first volume including the famous picture which shows how the Port Isaac life-boat had to be dragged through the narrow streets..