• In the annals of the RNLI new deed of gallantry are recorded year by year. From comparatively recent times, the very names of such casualties as World Concord, Netta Croan, Lyrma and Orion conjure up the high courage and fine seamanship shown by the lifeboatmen who went to their aid.

In Lifeboats to the Rescue (David and Charles, £5.95) John Beattie has gathered together into one book accounts which he first wrote for the Sunday Express of 16 such services.

Those chosen are widely spread: from Aith in Shetland, up north, down to St Peter Port in Guernsey, and from Kilmore in Co. Wexford, Ireland, to Walmer in Kent.

Before writing each account, John Beattie visited the station and talked with those who had been concerned in the service, so that narrative blends into first-hand memories which overflow into direct speech. The tone of the whole book is set on the first page of the first chapter; it opens with boyhood memories of Matthew Lethbridge, present coxswain of St Mary's lifeboat, Isles of Scilly, who has been awarded the silver medal for gallantry no less than three times and who is the son and grandson of past coxswains: 'It is almost your first memory—the ringing of the old hand-cranked phone, one of only a handful on the island. Two rings you ignored; they meant a call for the lifeboat secretary. Three rings were for your dad; he was the coxswain. But five, to alert both of them simultaneously —that was the signal that woke you every time; that told you there was an emergency and that the lifeboat was about to be launched. So you would slip out of bed with a blanket around your shoulders, shivering as your feet touched the cold linoleum. And from the window you would watch dad go, pulling on his oilskin coat as he ran down the narrow street towards the lifeboathouse It is dramatic, vivid and compelling and you must read on ... Portraits of the coxswains and, where possible, photographs taken during a service or of survivors, illustrate a book which can be highly recommended to all lifeboat people—J.D.

• The Lifeboats of Littlehampton is the latest booklet written and produced by Jeff Morris and it tells the story of a station first established in 1884 in the days of pulling and sailing lifeboats; closed in 1921, at the time when, with the advent of motor lifeboats, the number of stations around the coast was being greatly reduced; and then re-opened in 1967 with a D class inflatable lifeboat to meet the post-war increase of 'holiday' incidents. The narrative is illustrated by a fine selection of photographs, old and new.

One of the first crew members of the new inflatable lifeboat was Johnny Pelham, grandson of the last coxswain of the old pulling and sailing lifeboat.

Jeff Morris recalls how, when East Pakistan was devasted by floods in 1970, the RNLI answered an urgent appeal from the British Red Cross by immediately making available 20 inflatable lifeboats. Lt David Stogdon and Michael Brinton from Cowes base flew out with the boats to be joined a few days later by Johnny Pelham and another Littlehampton lifeboatman, Roy Cole. For the work they did, training local Ranger Scouts to handle the high speed boats and taking supplies to isolated communities, all four men were accorded the thanks of the Institution inscribed on vellum.

No story of Littlehampton would be complete without reference to William Osborne Ltd, and a brief history of these boatbuilders has been included together with a list of the 57 lifeboats built in their yard since the early 1950s.

Peter Cheney has been honorary secretary since the station re-opened in 1967, and copies of The Lifeboats of Littlehampton are available from him at Martlesham, Berry Lane, Littlehampton, Sussex, price 75p plus 25p packing and postage.—J.D.

• Ready for Sea by Basil Mosenthal and Dick Hewitt (Adlard Coles, £2.95) is a really excellent book especially if you are short of the pottering time aboard your boat which enables you to look into everything and/or if you are short of experience (years of practical experience).

The aim of the book is to help owners to bring their boats up to a really seaworthy condition and then maintain them that way by the use of check lists.

In the process of using the book there can be hardly any aspect of boat handling that does not come under review.

The authors have contrived to produce the book in such a way that it can be applied to almost any boat and yet remains uncomplicated by small irrelevant details.—E.J.

• A new edition of the Cruising Association Handbook has recently been published. This sixth edition, fully revised, covers a slightly larger cruising area than previous editions and contains extra information in the form of additional chartlets and passage planning notes. Metrication has been introduced. Very well printed and easy to follow, it is sold as fully updated as possible with the new IALA buoyage system anticipated and with a spring 1981 supplement covering the period from going to press at the end of December, 1980. As always, however, the Handbook must be used in conjunction with full scale charts and Notices to Marines for the area concerned.

The new edition, blue, is much the same size as the former edition, red, and will again be a must for many cruising yachtsmen, especially those visiting more than one area each served by other more local pilots for small boat sailors; this makes the price of £17.50 (£12.00 to Cruising Association Members) very acceptable for coverage of the whole of the British Isles and the European coast from the Baltic to Gibraltar.

Annual correction supplements will be forthcoming each spring and the Handbook can be obtained from chandlers and bookshops or direct from the Cruising Association, Ivory House, St Katharine Dock, London El 9AT.-E.J.

• Other general interest books recently received include: Fourteen minutes—that was the time it took for the liner, Empress of India, to sink after colliding with the Norwegian collier Storstad, in May 1914, with over a thousand lives lost. Based on the personal accounts of survivors, Fourteen Minutes by James Croall (Sphere Books, £1.25) is a dramatic reconstruction of the events leading up to, during and after the disaster.

Steam has served and fascinated man for decades. The Navy made good use of it to power their picket boats,'and their story is told in Steam Picket Boats, by N. B. J. Stapleton (Terence Dalton, £6.95).

In The Trawlermen (Tops'l Books, £5.75 hardback; £3.75 paperback) David Butcher recalls the heyday of the fishing industry between 1900 and 1960 through the memories of the men who manned Britain's trawler fleets in the great days of sail and steam. These trawlermen are now retired but the author has recorded and set down their story in an 'oral history'.

If it proves to be another wet summer, a book which will keep the youngsters occupied for a while is The Lighthouse Boy by Craig Mair (John Murray, £4.95). It is the story of Jamie Scott, a boy of 12 years old who, when his father was press ganged into the Navy, joined the men building the Bell Rock Lighthouse to support his mother, brothers and sisters, with plenty of adventures along the way.

Number 15 of the ever popular Observer's Books series has been up-dated. Ships by Frank E. Dodman (Frederick Warne, £1.95) contains technical details, diagrams and photographs of every kind.

A conservative estimate for the number of ships wrecked off the coasts of our islands is put at a quarter of a million, and the drama of some of the most interesting shipwrecks is told in Richard Larn's book Shipwrecks of Great Britain and Ireland (David and Charles, £7.95).—S.G..