• The history of Britain's Coastguard is an extraordinarily colourful one, and it is surprising that hitherto no full history of the service has been published.

The deficiency has now been made good by William Webb in an admirable work entitled Coastguard! An Official History of HM Coastguard (HMSO, £4.95). The Prince of Wales contributes a foreword, in which he recalls his own experiences as an auxiliary coastguard when he was at Gordonstoun School.

Not the least attraction of Mr Webb's book is the clear and uncomplicated style in which is is written. Research into the Coastguard records has clearly been extensive and Mr Webb has benefited both from earlier research carried out by the former Chief Inspector of Coastguard, Commander Peter Bartlett, and from information provided by a number of members of the service.

The history of HM Coastguard falls roughly into three periods. The first began in 1822, when a Treasury minute directed that 'the Preventive Service, consisting of Preventive Water Guard, Cruizers and Riding Officers' was to be 'termed in future the Coast Guard'. This first period, during which the primary concern of the service was the fight against smuggling, ended in 1856, when the Coastguard was placed under Admiralty control. For some 60 years the Coastguard existed mainly to provide a reserve for the Royal Navy. Only after the war of 1914-1918 was its principal function officially acknowledged to be that of helping to save life.

The liveliest passages in Mr Webb's book are, understandably, concerned with the story of the fight against smuggling. The activities of such notorious smugglers as the Hawkhurst gang are duly recorded, but much other information of interest also emerges.

For example Mr Webb quotes the Emperor Napoleon, while in exile on Elba, stating that during the war with Britain 'all the information I received from England came through the smugglers'.

The smugglers' organisation was imaginative and effective, and to protect them from the penalties which applied to British citizens caught in the act, many smugglers arranged to have their children born on the other side of the Channel so that they could acquire French nation- aiity. The coastguards who tried to combat the smugglers had a hard and dangerous life, and Mr Webb quotes one old coastguard, who stated: 'It was enough to kill a horse and only a strong man could stand it'.

In depicting the struggle between the forces of law and order and the smugglers Mr Webb tends perhaps to exaggerate the venality of the revenue officers and to give the Coastguard rather too much credit for the part it played in bringing smuggling to an end. Honest revenue officers did exist. One of them was William Arnold, the father of Dr Thomas Arnold, the headmaster of Rugby School, who receives only a brief mention in Mr Webb's work. The real destroyer of smuggling was of course the introduction of free trade, an event which Mr Webb passes over rather lightly.

In his treatment of the period when the Coastguard served mainly to supplement the manpower of the Royal Navy Mr Webb seems to me very sound in his judgment. The Coastguard has suffered over the years more than it deserved from battles for power between various government departments. As Mr Webb puts it, 'the Coastguards, in their long history, seem to have been perpetually subjected to reviews by authority, which were intended to benefit or re-organise the service and they have been shuttled about between one authority or another willy-nilly'. Nevertheless, it was during the period of Admiralty control that the Coastguard developed the versatility and wide range of activity which have long characterised the service. Coastguards during these years operated the breeches buoy lifesaving apparatus, they launched their own boats to supplement the work of the lifeboats of the RNLI, they were responsible for the administration of the Wild Birds Protection Act, and they had to clean rare fish and send them to the Natural History Museum in South Kensington.

Mr Webb also pays a well deserved tribute to the work of the voluntary lifesaving brigades and quotes to advantage Queen Victoria's son, the Duke of Edinburgh (Affie), who in his capacity as Admiral Superintendent of Naval Reserves said of the Coastguards: 'They are foremost at all wrecks, they are conspicuous at all our great watering places, and are looked upon as examplesof the officers and seamen serving in the Royal Navy.' After war broke out in 1914 members of HM Coastguard fulfilled the role for which they had primarily been appointed, that of providing the necessary naval reserve, but as a result there was a deplorable shortage of people to carry out the other Coastguard duties.

In practice the work tended to fall largely on the wives of Coastguard officers and on Sea Scouts.

When the war came to an end the familiar departmental power struggle was resumed. The first Chief Inspector of Coastguard, Captain Vernon Rashleigh, who seems to have had both a strong character and an effective turn of phrase, commented: 'It is unfortunate that there are to be found in the Admiralty a certain number of naval officers now holding minor administrative posts who, without giving the question mature thought, are voicing the opinion that on conclusion of hostilities the Coastguard should not be given back to the Ministry'. The naval officers holding minor administrative posts were defeated, and the Coastguard in its modern form as a lifesaving organisation gradually came into being.

Nevertheless, when the Coastguard once again came under the control of the Board of Trade in 1964 it had served eight different ministries in 140 years.

Readers of THE LIFEBOAT may reflect how fortunate the RNLI has been to be spared all this juggling and dislocation.

Whether it could have avoided it, had the service ever come under state control, is an open question.

The recent history of the Coastguard is one which must command respect and admiration, and Mr Webb does well to call attention to the activities of a variety of individuals. One such was P. A.

Woodford of the Sandown Rescue Company, who was awarded a long service medal. When this was conferred on him in 1973 it was discovered that he had rescued 22 people, four dogs, two sheep and a cat.

I find Mr Webb's treatment of the Coastguard's co-operation with other services a little flimsy and much could with advantage have been written, for example, on the importance of the introduction of helicopters for lifesaving purposes. There is also a regrettable mistake in Mr Webb's treatment of rescue organisations in countries outside Britain. He states: 'In European countries search and rescue is carried out by the services with the assistance of support ships which are in attendance on their fishing fleets'. To the many admirable voluntary lifeboat organisations in Europe this statement is likely to seem strange.

There are some excellent photographs, and as is so often the case with books published by the Stationery Office, the standard of printing is exceptionally high. It seems a pity therefore to find SOS appearing as S.O.S.The absence of a bibliography is also to be regretted in what must surely be for many years to come a standard work of reference on the history of an important national service.—P.H.

• Owning a Boat by Hugh Marriott (Nautical Publishing Co., £4.85) is not the first book which has been written on the subject.' However, it must be one of the most authoritative and up-to-date, written as it is by a man who is not only a true devotee of sailing for pleasure but who also has at his fingertips a rich fund of information and practical experience of the problems and expenses which confront a boatowner as seen from the yacht broker's office. These facts are too often obscured by the rose-tinted spectacles assumed by those who first hear the call of the sea.

It is written in the breezy style which bespeaks an amusing sailing companion.

I was delighted to encounter Old Harry's Law and its numerous corollaries with which I have been long acquainted although under a more familiar name! Also the Hornblower Factor which makes one feel that it is slightly disgraceful to talk about going downstairs to the kitchen in a boat. The author hints at the pitfalls which accompany the application of the common vocabulary of seamen to yachting. I can support this; if you are in any doubt, look at Reed's Almanac, page 854—Glossary of Nautical Terms: 'BEAR UP: To put the helm up, i.e.

keep further away from the wind.' I can almost hear Hugh Marriott's conspiratorial laughter!—K.M.

% Lindisfarne or Holy Island, which was once one of the principal centres of learning and the arts in England and on whose rocky territory the presence of 311 different species of birds has been recorded, is the subject of a new book in David and Charles's enterprising islands series: The Holy Island of Lindisfarne and the Fame Islands by R. A. and D. B.

Cartwright (£4.50).

Holy Island's period of greatest distinction, when the famous illuminated Lindisfarne gospels were produced, lasted for some 200 years before the Viking attacks in the late ninth century forced the monks to retreat to the mainland, taking their gospels with them.

Much of the later history of the island has revolved round shipwrecks.

The authors have unearthed an interesting account of a fight which took place in 1643 between the minister of the parish and 'a gentleman dwelling near the island', both of whom coveted a cask full of beaver hats which had been recovered from a wreck. The minister, it was recorded, 'did sore wound the gentleman'. The close association of all the inhabitants with the sea was illustrated by the fact that two successive vicars acted as coxswain of the lifeboat in an emergency.

In their informative and well illustrated account of the history of a small community the authors do justice to the major part played by the lifeboats. One outstanding service, when 60 villagers, 25 of them women, had to wade waist deep into the sea to launch the lifeboat, took place in January 1922 during a south-easterly gale and a blinding snowstorm.

The lifeboat, which was named Lizzie Porter, was recently discovered in the River Trent and is to be preserved in perpetuity at St Katharine Yacht Haven, London.—P.H.

• 1975 saw the 100th anniversary of one of the most important of all Merchant Shipping Acts: that which introduced the load-line, or Plimsoll line as it has always been known. Samuel Plimsoll himself was known as 'the sailors' friend', and George Peters' biography The Plimsoll Line (Barry Rose, £2.25) shows us a remarkable man, accurately described by one of his supporters as 'bold, earnest and rash'.

Before the 1875 Act, it was easy enough for corrupt shipowners to make profits from insurance claims on policies as heavily overloaded as the ships themselves. A member of Parliament from 1868 to 1880, Samuel Plimsoll fought, for that is the best description, the owners of such 'coffin-ships', and goaded governments which were by turns timid and stubborn. Even with the Plimsoll line embodied in law, it took 15 years further struggle to get the responsibility given to the Board of Trade.

Samuel Plimsoll was backed in his campaign by facts made available by the RNLI, which had called attention to overladen and unseaworthy ships in THE LIFEBOAT in 1867, even before Plimsoll took up the cause. When money was collected in appreciation of his work, Plimsoll directed that it should be spent on a lifeboat. Accordingly, the Samuel Plimsoll lifeboat was named by him at Lowestoft in 1876. It was a fitting tribute to a man who was born three weeks before the RNLI was founded, and who did so much for the British seafarer.—A.H.G.

• This is Sailboat Cruising by J. D.

Sleightholme (Nautical Publishing Co., £4.85), a 168-page booklet, provides an excellent primer which employs the strip-cartoon teaching technique for the benefit of the boat owner who may be daunted by the more traditional treatise on seamanship or navigation but who, without guidance, could be liable to run into trouble. The RNLI should be correspondingly grateful to Des Sleightholme and hope that his book has a wide circulation.

The instruction and advice contained in the text is without exception sound and the illustrations by Peter Milne are clearly the work of a competent draughtsman, although he shares a weakness of this breed when it comes to portraying the human figure.

If anything, the illustrations are overdone. Is it really necessary to include a picture of a cup of cocoa and a bar of chocolate (page 165) to assist the reader in the understanding of the text?—K.M.

• Three publications concerned with Welsh maritime history, and in particular with that of Gwynedd, have appeared recently. One, An Island's Heritage by J. P. Morris, tells in great and careful detail the story of 150 years of lifesaving on Anglesey, from the placing of the first lifeboat on the island at Llanddwyn in 1826 up to the present day. During those years Anglesey's lifeboats have launched over 2,000 times and saved more than 3,100 lives. For rescues around the island's coast nine gold, 61 silver and 51 bronze medals for gallantry have been awarded, including the gold, silver and bronze medals awarded for the services to Hindlea in 1959 and Nafsiporos in 1966.

Each station, past and present, has its chapter, several of them recalling the pioneering work of the Rev. James Williams and his wife Frances. An Island's Heritage, price 25p (postage and packing lOp) is available from the RNLI Welsh District Office, The Exchange, Mount Stuart Square, Cardiff CF1 6ED.

Photographs of the Rev. James and Frances Williams and their son, the Rev. Owen Lloyd Williams, who was twice awarded the silver medal of the RNLI, appear among a selection of nineteenth and twentieth century photographs reproduced in a delightful booklet by Aled Eames entitled Ships and Seamen of Gwynedd (Gwynedd Archives Service, County Offices, Caernarfon LL55 1SH, £1). There are photographs of sailing ships, boatyards, ships' logs and a fine portrait gallery of captains, their crews and sometimes their families.

Aled Eames, Lewis Lloyd, Bryn Parry and John Stubbs are the editors of an ambitious new journal, Maritime Wales (Gwynedd Archives Service, price £1.25), the aim of which is to bring together articles, notes and news reflecting the current interest in maritime historical studies in Wales. Among an impressive list of contributions to the first number of the journal is a paper entitled 'The Statutory Ship Registers of the Welsh Ports' by Grahame Farr, who needs no introduction to lifeboat people.—J.D.

• Among other books received are two with very different approaches to essentially the same basic theme: the quality of command at sea. One, Command at Sea (Cassell, £4.95) is by the late Oliver Warner and looks at great fighting admirals from Hawke to Nimitz. The other, Deep as the Sea (Eyre Methuen, £4.95) is a biography of Admiral H. A. 'Bertie' Packer by his wife, Joy; a story of one naval officer's career and his family's life, dedicated to their four grandsons.—J.D..