• Howard Biggs, in his book The Sound of Maroons (Terence Dalton, Suffolk, £5.80) has researched diligently to produce such a fine history of the Kent and Sussex lifeboat stations from 1802 to 1977.

Much more than a reference book, however, the story also provides a wonderful glimpse of seafaring over the past 175 years.

The book is very well produced, with numerous photographs, illustrations and drawings and Mr Biggs has recounted many of the hundreds of rescues effected by the Kent and Sussex lifeboats. Often they were spectacular, such as the classic service of the Ramsgate lifeboat, Bradford, in 1881, when Coxswain Charles Fish was awarded the gold medal for gallantry for his skill and determination in rescuing 12 men from the barque Indian Chief after being 'out in that furious and bitter gale for 26 hours'. In January 1952 North Foreland went out from Margate in what her coxswain later described as 'one of the worst trips we ever had' to pluck two exhausted men from their five-hour ordeal in the rigging of a sunken barge.

There is a chapter on the notorious Goodwin Sands and another pays tribute to the war-time service of lifeboatmen, especially at Dunkirk.

The volume of shipping among the sandbanks and reefs of the Channel coast has always created particular hazards and nowhere have lifeboats served with greater distinction. However, this story is typical of lifeboat stations all round our coast. Mr Biggs writes knowledgeably and with pride not only of lifeboats and crews but also branches and guilds who give their support through fund raising. As the honorary secretary of the Broadstairs branch of the RNLI, and the holder of the gold badge, no one is more qualified to do so.—H.D.

• A new three-volume directory covering some 30,000 merchant ships from all over the world, is now in course of production: Talbot-Booth's Merchant Ships edited and illustrated by Lieut.-Commander E. C. Talbot- Booth, RD, RNR, director of the Ships Recognition Corps, and published by Marinart/Kogan Page, 116A Pentonville Road, London, Nl 9JN. The first volume (£12), already published, con" tains notes on ship recognition and profile drawings with brief technical details of some 3,500 individual ships or classes of ship, covering vessels with engines and bridges amidships and three-quarter aft. The index names about 8,500 ships in all. Volumes 2 and 3 will follow at about nine-month intervals. The publishers plan to issue regular supplements to all three volumes to keep the work up to date.—J.D.

• Aimed perhaps more particularly at the younger reader but exciting enough for all tastes, in Saved from the Sea (Beaver Books, 50p) John Davies has collected a wide variety of rescue stories which range from that of Grace Darling to the fight to save the submarine vehicle Pisces III which, to mix a metaphor, might be described as a nautical cliff-hanger.

The incredible Mr Winstanley, builder of the first Eddystone lighthouse, must enliven any book in which he appears and his tragic end one stormy night when his pagoda-like structure was swept away, taking him and the lighthouse keepers to their deaths, was in keeping with his amazing life.

Perhaps, in stories of the sea, those of the men who died are more gripping than those of the rescued. Certainly one may find both admiration and pity for those lost in lifeboat disasters, such as that of St Ives in Cornwall, which is graphically described.—E.W.M.

0 As a tribute to the men who have served the Lifeboat Institution in Orkney over all the years since the first lifeboat was established at Stromness in 1867, the Orkney Natural History Society has published an illustrated booklet containing brief histories of Orkney lifeboat stations past and present: Stromness, Longhope, Stronsay and Kirkwall. The booklet, price 25p plus 8p packing and postage, is available from the Society at the Museum, 52 Alfred Street, Stromness, Orkney.—J.D.

• The reader of Electronic Navigation for Small Craft by Dag Pike (Adlard Coles, £10) will be continuously reminded that the author has been an inspector of lifeboats. Anyone who has experienced poor visibility at sea will feel the yearning for reliable aids to navigation in small craft. He will also sense the caution with which the information from these aids must be used when the elements are screaming for an answer.

This book of 149 pages of text, including photographs and numerous diagrams, covers all the navigation equipment which small boat operators may fit, or may wish to fit, given adequate stowage space and a healthy bank balance. While aimed at the yachtsman, it encompasses all craft up to the size of our largest lifeboats.

Essentially this volume is a collection of information which is available from other scattered sources, collected for those who may never get around to scanning technical and operation manuals but screened by a practical seaman and navigator who is aware of the limitations of the equipment. Dag Pike makes it clear that in heavy weather the operator may not be physically capable of plotting the information from his instruments, and anyway the bearing may be several degrees in error. He then points out how to deal with the situation.

As a seaman deeply involved with training, I find the book most useful. It is a guide to the bewildering array of dials, neon indicators, and print-outs available to today's small boat navigator, which goes beyond the manufacturers' manuals.—L.J.V.

• The language of the sea is a living language, keeping pace with advancing marine technology and the present day expansion of interest in yacht racing and cruising. Such words as 'cavitation', 'starcut spinnaker', 'electrolysis' and 'Cunningham hole' quietly slip into place beside old familiar terms like 'amidships', 'baggy wrinkle', 'rhumb line' or 'limber hole'. In compiling A Glossary of Modern Sailing Terms (George Allen and Unwin, £2.50) John Rousmaniere has confined his attention almost entirely to terms in active use in the sailing vocabulary of the mid-1970s and has thus produced a valuable complement to dictionaries of more traditional seamen's terms.

Introducing the glossary, Bill Robinson, editor of the American magazine Yachting, talks of nautical language as a practical tool of communication; and it is an essential tool alike to those who go to sea and those who would understand the lore of seafaring.—J.D.

• Anyone who has followed such brave endeavours as the attempts to save the disabled Flying Enterprise in 1952 (or the recent attempts to refloat the oil rig stranded on Guernsey) will find Salvage from the Sea by Commander Gerald Forsberg (Routledge and Kegan Paul, £4.95) hard to put down. It is both authoritative and very amusing reading.—J.D..