Among the 455 people aboard the passenger steamer Royal Charter which went aground off the Anglesey coast on 25th October, 1859, were members of the family of R. M. Ballantyne, the famous writer of children's books. Ballantyne was deeply impressed by the scenes he witnessed at Moelfre as bereaved people searched for dead friends and relations, and he decided to write a book which would call attention to the need for more life-boats and more efficient life- saving equipment. The outcome was his book The Life-boat which for many years was a best seller.

In the penultimate chapter of the book Ballantyne included an appeal for funds for the R.N.L.I., to which there was a considerable response. After the book appeared the life-boat service became for a time his first choice as a subject for his lectures. In December, 1864, he wrote to his sister: '/ think the Life-boat will be a first-rate, serious, & weighty lecture wh. I shall not be ashamed to deliver before the most learned & fastidious society in the land!' For two of his lectures given at the Queen Street Hall in Edinburgh in February, 1865, the demand for tickets was such that they were all sold within a few hours and hundreds of disappointed people were turned away. A few days later he gave a lecture to an even larger gathering in the Free Assembly Hall, and the next day a committee was set up which undertook to raise funds for a new life-boat. The committee succeeded, and in the autumn of 1866 the Provost of Edinburgh named the Edinburgh and R. M. Ballantyne life-boat.

In a recently published biography, Ballantyne the Brave (Rupert Hart-Davis, 50s.), Eric Quayle has produced a lively, carefully documented and sympathetic study of an author whose popularity was such that when he died, young readers, led by the boys of Harrow School, voluntarily subscribed to provide a memorial to one who had given them boundless pleasure. Ballantyne's deep interest in the work of the life-boat service is given due emphasis.—P.H.

• Robert Malster has made an admirable addition to the valuable series of life-boat station histories edited by Grahame Farr and published by D. Bradford Barton Ltd. of Truro. This is Wreck and Rescue on the Essex Coast (30s).

In dealing with the Essex stations, Mr. Malster has concentrated on the new types of life-boat which in different periods have been stationed at Harwich; on the work of the Southend life-boat during the last war; on Clacton's services to crashed aircraft; and on the period at Walton when there were two life-boats, one controlled by the R.N.L.I, and the other a private life-boat.

In his opening section he pays suitable tribute to the many gallant acts of rescue carried out off the Essex coast by men in private boats whose livelihood to some extent depended on salvage. In the middle of the last century for instance, John Glover, a Rowhedge smack-owner, was responsible for saving nearly 300 lives.

A colourful story he tells is of a rescue by the Harwich life-boat crew which took place in 1894, when they put out to a Liverpool barquentine and found thatboth the captain and the mate were drunk. The crew of the barquentine wanted to be taken off, but the captain threatened them with his revolver. In evidence in court later, one of the life-boatmen said that when the crew of the stranded vessel were ordered to heave up the anchor the seas were so heavy that 'the poor fellows couldn't do it; the crew said if the life-boatmen left the ship they would leave too—and very wise of them to do so'.

Mr. Malster records that the first life-boat supplied by the R.N.L.I. to the Walton station in 1884 was paid for by the drama group of the Honourable Artillery Company, and on one occasion a man took his place in the life-boat in full-dress Yeomanry uniform. There was considerable rivalry between the crews of the R.N.L.I. life-boats and the private boats which one after another were named True-to-the-core, and this gives rise to a number of good stories. At a later stage in the history of the Walton station, Mr. Malster records the out- standing service carried out in 1966 when a Panamanian steamer went aground and Coxswain Bloom carried out a rescue requiring excellent seamanship.

A service which was unusual at the time was a call answered by the Clacton life-boat in 1914 when a seaplane crashed off the beach. Three weeks later another seaplane carrying Winston Churchill was forced down off Clacton, but on this occasion the life-boat was not needed to effect a rescue.

Like all the books in this excellent series, Wreck and Rescue on the Essex Coast is well produced, well illustrated and thoroughly documented.—P.H.

0 A History of the Criccieth Life-boat Station 1853-1968 has been written by Peter L. Williams, of 8 Salem Terrace, Criccieth, Caernarvonshire. Cost of the history is 2s. 6d. with postage Is. extra. The author, who is a young member of the Life-boat Enthusiasts' Society, is handling orders direct from his home address..