9 In Captain George Manby, the inventor of the line-throwing mortar, Kenneth VValthew has found an excellent subject for a lively and colourful biography (From Rock and Tempest, Geoffrey Bles, £1.90/38s.). Manby was one of those eccentrics with a genius for invention which the eighteenth century threw up in such remarkable numbers. Apart from the mortar, he invented a portable fire extinguisher and provided a blueprint for the organisation of a national fire service. He also developed what he considered to be an unsinkable boat and narrowly escaped murder by drowning from Norfolk fishermen as a result. Manby was too a man of considerable courage. At the age of 56 he set off on a whaling expedition to the Arctic on board the Baffin. His object was to test a harpoon gun which he had invented, but the harpooners treated him with little more consideration than the Norfolk fishermen had done.

Manby's capacity for invention was rivalled by his talent for upsetting those people whose support he was likeliest to need. While the Royal Society of Arts was still considering whether to award him a medal he publicly described its committee as 'persons neither exalted by rank, nor that dignity of mind which flows from a liberal education'. He did not get the medal.

Mr. Walthew considers that Manby never completely regained his sanity after a series of crude operations on his skull. Certainly his vanity was abnormal. He designed and created his own stone memorial during his lifetime, and in spite of shamefully neglecting his wife and continually sponging on his friends he was able to announce that 'there is not one action in my long life which I look back on with regret'.

Some of Manby's claims were so outrageous it is difficult to subscribe to Mr. Walthew's view that not enough credit has been given to Manby for his part in the foundation of the R.N.L.I. Manby was indeed present at the City of London Tavern when the embryo organisation came into being, and in connection with his invention of a mortar he had propagated theidea of some kind of national society for saving life from shipwreck. None of this, however, detracts from the originality of Sir William Hillary's pamphlet published in Douglas in 1823, which is the basis of the organisation of the R.N.L.I. today—P.H.

• The Science Museum, London, is noted for the high quality of its publications and two illustrated booklets to hand are Steamships 1: Merchant Ships to 1880byE. W. Bathe (H.M.S.O., price 35p/7s.) and British Warships 1845-1945 by B. W. Bathe (H.M.S.O., price 35p).

Although no definite date can be given for the introduction of the paddle-wheel for the propulsion of a vessel, a bas-relief of 527 A.D. shows what is believed to be a Roman war vessel fitted with six small paddle-wheels and driven by three pairs of oxen. In the booklet on warships it is stated that trials arranged by the Admiralty during the 1840s showed the superiority of the screw propeller over the paddle-wheels for ordinary sea purposes. Both booklets apiece contain 20 coloured plates of ship models.

• Seamanship by Duncan Macrae Henderson, Master Mariner, M.I.N. (The Shipping and Trading Co., 16 Rochester Terrace, Leeds, LS6 3DF, price £2.75/55s.) took 13 years to grow and it is expected to become a standard work. It is designed and written for apprentices and candidates for the B.O.T. examinations for the master's, mate's and second mate's certificates, but it contains much basic seamanship which will be of value and interest to fishermen, yachtsmen and others. It is easily comprehended by the solitary student and has a wide range of subjects as the partial list below shows.

There are 475 pages of print, 26 chapters, 357 figures, one diagram, one plate and a loose copy of the Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea.

• Broadstairs, Kent, once had a famous life-boat station. Now William H. Lapthorne, local and naval historian, has recaptured some of the local life-boat exploits in A Broad Place: An Historical Account of Broadstairs from 1500 A.D.

to the Present (through the author at 'Arx Ruochim', 42 Pierremont Avenue, Broadstairs, price 30p/6s.). The Chairman of the R.N.L.I., Admiral Sir Wilfrid Woods, G.B.E., K.C.B., D.S.O., has written the introduction. The booklet lists life-boats, launches, lives saved and the names of past life-boatmen associated with Broadstairs.

Three of the 18 illustrations are of the first Broadstairs life-boats and are published for the first time..