• Dr Robert Haworth, the author of First Aid for Yachtsmen (Adlard Coles, £3.95), is not only the honorary medical adviser to the RNLI's station at Barmouth, but he is also an active member of the ILB crew, and in that capacity was awarded the Institution's silver medal for gallantry in 1971.

He is therefore fuliy aware of the limitations that small boats impose upon first-aiders, and in this book he has pruned the subject hard and cut away theory, details of the structure and function of the body, and even the descriptions of the signs and symptoms .that may lead to accurate diagnosis.

The equipment recommended is very simple so it is perhaps a pity that the photograph on the cover does not bear out the simplicity of the text.

With this original book on board any yachtsman can give instant first aid which, in the waters around these islands, should be quite adequate until the advice given in the special chapters on how to move casualties and how to communicate in emergency with other ships or the shore brings more expert help.

However, any yachtsman cruising further should be better instructed and better equipped.—G.H.

• Grahame Farr's Paper on Life-Boat History, No. 2, tells the story of George Palmer's life-boats from 1828 to 1847.

Palmer was an Essex man, who at the age of 16 was in a boat which capsized in Macao Roads. He and other members of the crew remained for three days on the bottom of the boat before being picked up by a Chinese vessel. In 1796 he got his first command and five years later came ashore to become a partner in his family's East India trading house.

He was MP for South Essex from 1836 to 1847 and joined the Committee of Management of the RNLI two years after its foundation. In the same year he was appointed Deputy Chairman.

The first lifeboats ordered by the RNLI were built by William Plenty at Newbury, but because he was unable to obtain enough skilled labour he delivered only three out of twelve boats ordered. The RNLI adopted a policy of persuading local committees to have local boats suitably modified, but the Vicar of Llanfairynghornwy in Anglesey, the Reverend James Williams, pointed out that there were no suitable boats to be found in this area, where many shipwrecks occurred. For some time work had been continuing on the production of a standard lifeboat. A prototype was altered according to George Palmer's proposals, and the first two built-toorder Palmer boats went to North Wales, one being stationed at Cemlyn and the other at Barmouth.

Grahame Farr's admirable booklet gives constructional details and the history of all Palmer lifeboats and accounts of the services which they are known to have performed. Available from Grahame Farr, 98 Combe Avenue, Portishead, Bristol BS20 9JX, price 50p including postage.—P.M.

• Exercises for the Ocean Yacht Navigator by Kenneth Wilkes (Nautical Publishing Co., £3.95) provides useful exercises in astronomical navigation, chronometer work and the computation of ocean passages for the yachtsman.

Examples are gives from all types of observation in both hemispheres.

If the reader holds a copy of Ocean Yacht Navigator by the same author he will be able to solve the problems in the first three chapters by reference to extracts from the 1975 Almanac printed in that book. We hope that he will already have copies of the sight reduction tables and Norie's or Inman's Tables in the shelf above his chart table, but if he has thrown away last year's Almanac, he must hurry to scrounge a copy from one of his fellow navigators before it is too late, otherwise the usefulness of the last three chapters of the book will fade away.

As earnest of a thorough review of the book, I promised myself that I would find a spelling or printing mistake and an error in computation. I found the first, the only one I could find, on page 16 where a new star called 'MirkaF is to be found. I was equally hard put to it to find a computing error, but found it at last on page 75 where an azimuth has been incorrectly extracted from AP 3270 which makes a nonsense out of a threestar fix.

If there is anything missing from this excellent book, I would suggest that there should be more examples in star identification. It is good practice to preplan at the chart table the observations you intend to make at twilight but Iknow, and I am sure Kenneth Wilkes knows, that 'life ain't like that' and when you arrive on deck with the sextant, you are lucky to be able to pick any three or more stars out of holes in the clouds without the foggiest notion what they are. Few yachts enjoy the luxury of a star-globe and it is useful to know how to use the sight reduction tables backwards.

Starting with altitude and azimuth and knowing your DR position, you can pick from the tables the declination and SHA of the body observed.

There is a lot of enjoyment to be had by the winter-bound ocean navigator from working through other people's logs. I was delighted to see that I had visited almost the exact spot indicated in one of the examples at twilight returning from Fastnet and, referring to my own sight book, to find that in a four-star fix I had used two of the same stars used in the example.—K.M.

• The north-east coast of England is synonymous with lifeboats. Quite apart from the famed Grace Darling rescue—and more important than it— it was this part of the coast that saw the first coherent efforts to reduce the appalling loss of life through shipwreck.

The first purpose-built lifeboat, the 'Original', was built by Henry Greathead at South Shields and saved hundreds of lives between 1790 and 1830. Another Greathead lifeboat was stationed at Spurn Point in 1800, but transferred to Redcar in 1802 and was named Zetland. She had a remarkable career, performing her last service in 1880, and is now the main exhibit in a museum near the new Redcar lifeboat house and 37' Oakley lifeboat.

The intervening period of time, in which Redcar had eight lifeboats, is chronicled in A History of the Redcar Lifeboats by David Phillipson, a member of Redcar crew for 12 years and now head launcher. This 15-page illustrated booklet costs 50p (a percentage of the profits goes to lifeboat funds) and is available from Mr Phillipson at 43 Stanley Grove, Redcar, Cleveland TS10 3LN.—A.H.G.

• It must |be recorded with some sadness that Jack Froom's The Story of the Southend Lifeboat (30p plus 9p postage, proceeds to the RNLI, from the author, 164 Stock Road, Billericay, Essex CM12 ORS) appears just as the offshore lifeboat has been withdrawn from the station. Nonetheless, Southend lifeboatmen and townspeople can look back with pride on nearly a century of lifesaving in the Thames Estuary; a tradition which is being carried into the future by her inshore lifeboats.

Mr Froom, who is secretary of the Thames Estuary Lifeboat Research Group, records many of the remarkable services, such as the eight launches in a gale that lasted two days in December 1940. A silver and five bronze medals rewarded arduous service by a crew whose average age was 45.—A.H.G..