• In Rescue Call (Kaye & Ward, 2is.) Angus Mac Vicar has written an admirable brief history of the life-boat service. It is extremely readable and a great deal of information has been packed into no more than 128 pages. Many of the familiar stories are retold, including the exploit of Grace Darling and her father and the rescues from the Indian Chief in 1881, the Rohilla in 1914 and the Daunt Rock lightvessel in 1936. Mr. MacVicar has, however, called on his own first hand knowledge to recount rescues which are less well known. Most of these took place off the south west coast of Scotland where he himself was a member of the Southend (Kintyre) Life-Saving Apparatus Crew.

Having made the point that St. Columba must have been a superb seaman, he brings home the hazards facing those who have carried out rescues on this part of the coast. One curious tale tells of how the Campeltown life-boat saved two men who were being towed out into the Atlantic by a basking shark which they were anxious to capture.

Other rescues are recalled in the words of the former coxswain, Duncan Newlands. These accounts are particularly vivid, and at one point the ex- coxswain describes how a member of his crew lifted and heaved men from the United States liberty ship aboard the life-boat 'like a hammer-thrower at the Highland Games'. A moment of crisis is also recalled when the coxswain declined to take a case of whisky aboard in addition to more than 50 survivors.

One of the problems facing all historians of the life-boat service is to keep the story up to date in view of the many changes taking place. Mr. MacVicar has been able to include a description of the yo-foot steel life-boat, and at one point he calls attention to the type of protective clothing used by the United States Coast Guard and comments: 'It seems to me they allow much more freedom of action than do stiff oil- skins and bulky life-jackets. Is there an idea here for the Institution ?' He was not to know when he wrote this of the R.N.L.I.'s latest developments in protective clothing and life-jackets.

The book is well printed, with attractive chapter headings, and has some excel- lent illustrations, including one of the Sumner life-boat in New Zealand rescuing the one-man crew of a bath-tub.

Mr. MacVicar is guilty of one slight inaccuracy when he states that the R.N.L.I. has always been supported entirely by voluntary contributions. There was, of course, a period from 1854 to T 9 when a Government subsidy had to be accepted..