• Sir William Hillary, founder of the RNLI, was a man of considerable vision who always pursued his ideas relentlessly, though some of his schemes were not realised until after his death. He_ proposed the formation of an international association for shipwreck (the International Life-boat Conference was founded in 1924) and the use of steam lifeboats (the first was built in 1888) but the finest memorial to his work is the RNLI itself.

The story of his life, with its great public achievements and constant personal difficulties, is related with interest and sympathy by Robert Kelly in For Those In Peril (Shearwater Press, Church Road, Onchan, Isle of Man, £4.75). By careful research Mr Kelly has produced a fascinating biography.

His tendency to dramatise the sea stories is justified in the way that he brings them alive.

Hillary became involved in sea rescue in 1822 when a severe gale battered ships in Douglas Bay. He was one of the volunteers who put out in rowing boats to the aid of the naval cutter Vigilant and when other vessels got into difficulties he encouraged more men to help. Over 200 sailors were saved. Just ten days later three boatmen from Castletown were drowned while rescuing men from a Royal Navy brig. It was Hillary who persuaded the Admiralty to grant pensions to their widows but he was not satisfied with these haphazard rescue arrangements where men put out in their own boats with no reward and no security for their dependents.

Hillary prepared his famous Appeal to the British Nation on the Humanity and Policy of forming a National Institution for the Preservation of Lives and Property from Shipwreck and printed 700 copies at his own expense. The Admiralty sympathised with his aims but refused to give any practical support. Then a meeting with an MP led to a number of influential men being called together to plan the new body. They arranged a meeting in the City of London Tavern, attended by leading politicians, churchmen and philanthropists, and the Institution was founded.

Hillary's whole career was dogged by financial troubles, which began at the height of the Napoleonic wars when invasion seemed imminent. He raised the largest private army in the country, the 'Essex Legion', which earned him a baronetcy but cost him his marriage, for he ran up huge debts using his wife's property as security. He moved to the Isle of Man and, having founded the new Life-boat Institution, continued to put to sea on rescues until he was 63, though he could not swim. The accounts of these rescues show Hillary's personal bravery for which he received three gold medals. He died a sad, lonely figure, still much respected but virtually bankrupt after his financial affairs became hopelessly entangled with a fraudulent bank.

Following one of his most famous rescues, when he was swept out of the lifeboat and broke six ribs, Lord Exmouth wrote to him: 'You, my dear friend, acted up fully to your professed principles . . . How truly gratifying it must be to have set your friends in the world so noble an example.

It is and will be admired by generations yet unborn . . .' This, then, is the story of a man of courage and conviction, a piece of social history and a valuable addition to any library of lifeboat books.—R.K.

• Published after his death, Fighting Sail (Cassell, £9.95) is the last work of the distinguished naval historian, Oliver Warner, who was also the author of the official history of the RNLI, The Lifeboat Service, written as part of the Institution's 150th anniversary celebrations in 1974. This finely produced new book, liberally illustrated with pictures of both the ships and the famous seamen who sailed in them, was completed after Mr Warner's death by Victoria Howard- Vyse. Mrs Howard-Vyse had helped him as his researcher for some years and she is herself a great-great-great niece of Vice-Admiral Lord Collingwood, Nelson's second-in-command at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

An introductory chapter brings the story of warfare at sea from the oarpropelled galley up to the preparations for the Spanish Armada in the late sixteenth century. The book, then getting under way, follows the story in greater detail until the coming of steam three centuries later. The first steampropelled ship to take part in an action was, in fact, HMS Diana; the date was 1824, the year in which the RNLI was founded.

Going back to the mid seventeenth century, Mr Warner pays tribute to Samuel Pepys' exceptional mastery of naval business while he was Secretary to the Admiralty: 'He established the officer structure; the ratings of ships; the contractual side of provisioning; the surveying of home waters, during the course of which Captain Grenville Collins's charts set a high standard of accuracy. He was no mere office man, for he went on voyages, once to Tangiers. He took pains to understand the entire business of shipbuilding . . . " Pepys later became Master of Trinity House, a Baron of the Cinque Ports and President of the Royal Society.

Warfare at sea is far removed from the work of the lifeboat service, but Mr Warner records one or two instances of what must in fact have been a frequent occurrence: the efforts made by the fighting men, even at the risk of their own lives, to rescue their fellows and their enemies from the water. It is well to remember, too, the debt all seafarers owe to those early naval officers who so meticulously charted the seas.—J.D.

• Maritime Wales is now well established as an authoritative publication eagerly awaited by all those interested in the history of commercial shipping and fishing around our coasts. Volume No 4 has just been published and among the varied and interesting contents are an article on herring fishing in Wales by J. Geraint Jenkins, curator of the Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum, Cardiff, and an article, 'Discharging the Vessel', in which Basil Greenhill, CMG, director of the National Maritime Museum, considers the crafts and skills involved in getting the cargo out of Ade, a pretty ketch of 79 tons gross, and into a shed on Appledore Quay one early summer day in the late 1920s.

Well worth its cost of £2, Maritime Wales No 4, edited by Aled Eames, Lewis Lloyd, Bryn Parry and John Stubbs, is published by the Archives Service of Gwynedd County Council, Caernarfon, LL55 1SH.—J.D.

• With the use of good similies The Yachtsman's Weather Guide by Ingrid Holford (Ward Lock, £1.95) employs technical language to deal with a very technical subject as simply as possible.

It explains the working of the weather machine and gives practical advice to yachtsmen.

To the non-meteorologist (usually yachtsmen) this subject often presents incomprehensible problems and this small book suitable for the saloon or chart table book compartment could be very useful in bridging the gap and helping yachtsmen and dinghy sailors to get more practical help from the various forecasts and visual signs.—E.J..