The Men and the Boats by Bernard Ashley (Allman & Son, 15s.) is appro- priately the first book in a new series entitled 'Serving our Society'. Other volumes on the police and the fire service are in preparation. The book is primarily intended for the young and ends with suggestions to teachers for tasks to be set to pupils. It is most attractively presented with more than 60 illustrations in the form of photographs, line drawings, charts and maps. The publishers are to be congratulated on producing a book of this quality at such a reasonable price.

Mr. Ashley begins by telling the story of a most unusual service carried out by the Southend-on-Sea life-boat in 1962 when a seaman, whose head had been jammed in a porthole of a Dutch vessel on fire, was rescued in the course of a service which called for exceptional bravery and disciplined action. He then proceeds to give a brief, lucid history of the life-boat service. For this he has clearly done a good deal of original research, and a number of facts concerning the early history of life-boats are included which do not appear in other works.

Developments in recent years are also given due prominence, and Mr. Ashley makes the point, in referring to a famous quotation of Sir Winston Churchill, that the life-boat service 'which does not quail is also a service which does not rest'.—P.H.

• Bloody Winter by Captain John M. Waters, Jr. (van Nostrand, 65s.) gives a most striking and graphic account of the war at sea during the black period in the Atlantic in late 1942 and 1943. This was the time when Allied shipping was under very heavy attack from the U-boat wolf packs, and even Winston Churchill confessed to some feelings of alarm.

The U.S. Coast Guard cutters played a big part in defeating the U-boat threat in conjunction with their Royal Naval and U.S. Navy counterparts. The U.S.

Coast Guard cutters, with their long range and excellent sea-keeping qualities, were excellent craft in the anti-submarine role, and the reviewer well remembers the yeoman service performed by the three cutters lent to the Royal Navy in the early days of the war and renamed H.M.S. Lulworth, Gorleston and Landguard, in the 40th escort group.

In brief, this is a well-written human documentary livened by some flashes of humour, which should be read by all professional naval officers, those sailors, soldiers and airmen who took part in the battle of the Atlantic, and also by historians and students of maritime warfare.

The author was one of the U.S. Coast Guard delegates at the tenth inter- national life-boat conference at Dinard and St. Malo in 1967.—D.G.W.

• The Rescue Ships by Vice-Admiral B. B. Schofield, C.B., C.B.E., and Lieut-.

Cmdr. (SP) L. F. Martyn, R.N.V.R. (William Blackwood & Sons Ltd., 30s.), is the story of how, with mounting casualties among merchant seamen in the 1939-1945 war, rescue ships, mostly from the coastal trade, were adapted for the task.

These small ships—they escorted 757 convoys and rescued 4,194 survivors— were commanded and manned by Merchant Navy personnel. Each carried a naval medical officer and a sick-berth attendant, and was fitted with a hospital and operating theatre. The life-saving equipment included rescue boats, Carley floats, float nets, scrambling nets, booms, grab hooks and hoists.

Altogether 29 rescue ships were provided during the war. Nothing deterredthem from their hazardous duty—U-boat packs, enemy long-range aircraft and surface ships, or the worst gales, ice and snowstorms of the North Atlantic and the costly convoys to Russia. Six of the rescue ships were lost or sunk.

The authors, who were both associated with the rescue ship organisation, are well equipped for the job: Vice-Admiral Schofield first went into action when he was a midshipman in 1913 at the Battle of the Dogger Bank; Lieut.-Cmdr.

Martyn served before the mast in a sailing ship, covered much of the world in cargo vessels, and was once shipwrecked in the Solomon Islands. The foreword is by Sir John McNee, D.S.O., F.R.C.P., D.SC., F.R.S.(E), M.D., who during the last war was consultant physician to the Royal Navy and had much to do with the medical and surgical work carried out in the rescue ships.—C.R.E..