• A welcome addition to the yachtsman's library of pilotage is the new book Channel Islands Pilot by Malcolm Robson (Nautical Publishing, £7.50) which contains the following appreciation by Major-General R. H. Farrant, CB, Chairman of the RNLI: Malcolm Robson has handed over to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution the author's royalties from the sale of this book—I am glad to be able to acknowledge this most generous action by a yachtsman, whose work as a qualified pilot in the Channel Islands has given him an abundance of local knowledge. I feel sure that the elegant and detailed presentation of this knowledge will be of great benefit to his fellow yachtsmen.

They are waters I know myself from cruising in them as a yachtsman, but more still I know them as waters where, summer and winter, the lifeboatmen of the Channel Islands have shown so well those qualities of courage and seamanship which are such outstanding characteristics of all the RNLI crews of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

Perhaps it takes an experienced seaman to appreciate to the full what these lifeboatmen face and overcome.

Malcolm Robson is certainly such a seaman, as apart from his intimate knowledge of Serquais waters, he has sailed his own yacht across the Atlantic Ocean and in the Pacific. Indeed he has first-hand knowledge of what it feels like to be a seaman in distress, as yachts have sunk under him in mid-ocean on two occasions.

The RNLI is most grateful to Malcolm Robson for his unstinted generosity.

0 In Great Sea Rescues (New English Library, 50p) Commander E. W.

Middleton faced something of a challenge.

This was how to retell the stories of the most famous rescues by lifeboats in a book which could be read as a consecutive narrative and not as a series of barely related incidents. He has succeeded admirably, largely because of his own extensive knowledge of the lifeboat service and a deep understanding of what may and could constitute danger at sea.

In an introductory passage he writes: 'This is the classic disaster: a sailing ship unable to set sufficient sail to give control with an unfriendly shore just under her lee. It may be a ship under way on passage from port to port but it could equally well be a ship sheltering at anchor, suddenly embayed by a shift of wind.'' From this he goes on to recount how when a fleet of 13 ships was driven on to the Goodwin Sands in November 1703 some 200 men were said to be alive and stranded there.

The loss of life which occurred around our coasts before there was an organised lifeboat service is difficult to comprehend today, for, as Commander Middleton points out, in the three years from 1816 to 1818 some 1100 British ships were stranded or wrecked and an average of 163 seamen lost each year.

Among the disasters and triumphs which the author recalls are the loss of the whole of The Mumbles crew when going to help of Samtampa in 1947, the rescue of survivors from Princess Victoria in 1953 by the Donaghadee and Cloughey-Portavogie lifeboats, and the rescue from Indian Chief, which W. Clarke Russell told so effectively through the words of the Ramsgate coxswain, Charles Fish.

In bringing the story up to date Commander Middleton writes of the stranding of Torrey Canyon with a cargo of 118,000 tons of oil: 'Once more, what could have been a disaster of the first magnitude with possibly the loss of most of the crews of both ships involved, results in the majority of the crew of the exploding tanker being saved.

How they escaped seems little short of miraculous but perhaps it will not always be so.' For the extraordinarily modest price of 50p the book is exceptional value and will, it is hoped, be read by many to whom epic rescues such as those achieved in the past by Ballycotton, Cromer, Moelfre and other crews are unfamiliar.—P.M.

• In the preparation of the history of Filey station 'Golf, Lima, Foxtrot, Echo' (the international call sign of its lifeboat) an enormous amount has been packed into a 32-page booklet. First, Jeff Morris, after much patient research, records the story of Filey lifeboats from the time, in 1823, when the residents of the town collected funds to purchase their own 30' boat, pulling 12 oars, up to the station's 150th anniversary in1973. During that time conventional lifeboats at Filey were launched 396 times and saved 253 lives—a story closely interwoven with brig and coble, trawler and drifter—and in the last nine of those years the ILB launched 117 times and saved 82 lives.

The last few pages of the booklet, which is illustrated by the editor, Mel Whittaker, are given over to brief historic shore notes, bringing the work of secretaries, committees and guilds into the story and giving the reader a good look at the organisation at work behind the scenes.

Copies from Filey honorary secretary, D. Liversidge, 21 Flat Cliff, Primrose Valley, Filey, price 50p including postage.—J.D.

• 'The story of the lifeboat service is a story of heroes...' These are the opening words of a fine booklet which has been produced in the Irish Environmental Library Series on The Lifeboat Service in Ireland. Written by Philip Mahoney, assistant national organiser, Ireland, and generously illustrated in colour by Peter Jay, it gives a brief history of the RNLI and an explanation of its organisation with particular reference to Irish stations, lifeboats and crews. The booklet ends with a record of some of the most memorable services by Irish lifeboats, including those to the Daunt Rock lightship by Ballycotton lifeboat and to the Liberian tanker World Concord by Rosslare Harbour lifeboat.

Copies from RNLI, 10 Merrion Square, Dublin 2, price 75p including postage.—J.D.

• How many of us have sat on the high stool in a ship's chartroom and gazed at the long row of books on the shelf without ever wondering what that lot costs! Sailing directions, tide tables, lists of lights, lists of radio signals, nautical tables, almanac, books on the weather, flags of all nations . . . all paid for by Big Brother. And then, one day, you squeeze your way into its counterpart in your own boat, bumping your head on the beam carved with certified navigation space 0.001 tons and realize that this time you are Big Brother. So you buy a copy of 'Reed's'—Reed's Nautical Almanac (Thomas Reed Publications, £4.95). And, unless you are planning to go further afield than Western European waters, you practically have the lot. Not only that, but you have a seamanship manual, a navigation manual, a first aid handbook, a dictionary of nautical terms in five languages and a lot else besides.

If one dared to criticize such a noble publication it would be to say that there is too much of it in a single volume. A quick count shows that of 26 sections, 17 contain permanent information and only nine those things which need to be reprinted annually. Section 9 is saved up for some future subject as yet undisclosed —what about the InternationalYacht Racing Association rules? I am sure that there are many yacht owners and small ship owners who would welcome two volumes, even if the resulting economy in paper left the effective price unchanged.

There have been some minor rearrangements and improvements in the new edition. A colour insert gives the new IALA buoyage system (see back cover of the last number of THE LIFEBOAT).

The new International Collision Regulations are reprinted again, after a false start last year. There are bound to be some errors and omissions (I could point to a couple) but these will no doubt be put right in the half-yearly supplement published on April 1, which is all part of the service.—K.M.

• Sailing Directions and Anchorages, North and North East Coasts of Scotland (Clyde Cruising Club, SV Carrick, Clyde Street, Glasgow Gl 4LN, £3.00, postage 20p) is the second of a new series of sailing directions issued by the CCC, and maintains the same high standard as the first, Orkney, reviewed in No. 454 of THE LIFEBOAT. Each of many small ports and anchorages from Cape Wrath to Kinnaird's Head are treated with a standard layout of chartlet and tabulated details of tides, approaches, anchorages, facilities and points of interest.

To my mind there is one small retrograde step in the second of the series and that is that the scale of the chartlets, which was consistently given in miles and cables, is now given in a confusing alternation of metres and cables, but then I told myself not to be silly because everybody knows that the cable is 185.2 metres except in the UK where it is 185.32 metres!—K.M.

• For the man who has had enough experience of sailing to want to design his own boat, but who does not know just how to set about it, Designing Small Craft by John Teale (Nautical Publishing, £3) offers a straightforward, practical guide. Let him but read the introduction and he will be encouraged to make a start. 'There is nothing desperately difficult about any aspect of boat design', writes the author, and, while his experimental effort is not likely to be in the first flight, ' . . . it should certainly float at its designed waterline and do all sorts of unambitious things in a perfectly satisfactory manner'.

Before the reader has time for hesitation or doubt he is presented with a list of the equipment he will need, shown how to set about drawing the lines plan and led into the necessary calculations to determine draft, displacement and longitudinal centres of buoyancy and gravity. The first step taken, with growing confidence he can progress with the author from simple flat bottom boats to chine forms and finally round bilges.—J.D.

• It is a proof of the popularity of Mike Peyton's sailing cartoons that by the time last winter's journal had appeared with its review of his first book of cartoons, a)) copies had been soJd. We wish its successor equal, if perhaps not quite so speedy, success.

Come Sailing Again (Nautical Publishing, £1.95) is described by the author as 'my second sincere attempt to warn people of the so-called joys of sailing'.

Eighty-eight excellent cartoons depict peril at sea in small boats, and for anybody who goes afloat there is an uneasy pleasure in laughing at the predicaments illustrated here. As Mr Peyton points out, 'although these incidents have not actually happened to you, if you sail long enough they will. But you will not be laughing then.'—A.H.G..