• There is a rich seam of historical booklets to report this autumn: In recent years it has been recognised that a boat specifically for lifesaving was established at Formby Point on the approaches to Liverpool as early as 1776. Britain's First Lifeboat Station by Barbara and Reginald Yorke gives a detailed account not only of Formby lifeboat station from those very early beginnings until it was finally closed in 1918, but takes the story back even further to the days, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when attempts to revive the apparently drowned were first strenuously encouraged. The result of much research, this booklet is fascinating reading and very well illustrated; it is also a memorial to the important part played in the saving of life at sea by some of Liverpool's most humanitarian and public spirited citizens. It is available, price £1.80 plus 20p postage, from Alt Press, 3 Wicks Lane, Formby, Liverpool L37 3JE; all profits will go to the RNLI widows' fund.

The Early Manx Lifeboats, 1803 to 1850 is the subject of Graham Farr's latest paper on lifeboat history, the seventh in this valuable series of monographs.

On the first page will be found drawings of the three types of lifeboat first established on the Isle of Man: 'Original', Plenty and Palmer. The first Douglas lifeboat was the thirteenth 'Original' to be built by Henry Greathead in his yard at South Shields.

Costing £200, she was the gift of the Duke of Atholl, Lieutenant Governor of the island, and she was delivered in 1803. There is no record, however, that she was ever used and it was not until after Sir William Hillary became involved in sea rescue in 1822 that other lifeboats were stationed on the Isle of Man: at Douglas in 1824, at Castletown in 1826, at Peel in 1829. and at Ramsey in 1830. The Early Manx Lifeboats, price 60p including postage and packing, is available from Grahame Farr, 98 Combe Avenue, Portishead, Bristol BS20 9JX. Please send remittance with order.

The Story of the Newhaven Lifeboats has been written by Jeff Morris and Dave Hendy. Like Douglas. Newhaven received an 'Original' lifeboat in 1803, but once again there is no record of either her or Newhaven's two other early boats being launched on service.

In 1852 the Friend in Need, a lifeboat built by James Beeching at Great Yarmouth, was stationed at Newhaven by the Shipwrecked Fishermen and Mariners' Society, to be taken over by the RNLI two years later. Since 1852 more than 600 lives have been rescued by Newhaven life boatmen. There are 31 photographs in this booklet which is available, price 75p plus 25p postage and packing, from Mrs Pat Johns, 6 Marine Court, Gibbon Road, Newhaven, East Sussex.

The Sheringham Lifeboats 1838-1981 by R. W. Malster is an account of a community which for many years was served, in good accord, by two lifeboat stations, one run by the fishermen with boats provided by a prominent local family, the Upchers, benefactors to the fishing community in various ways, and one by the RNLI. The first Upcher lifeboat, Augusta, which went on station in 1838, was followed by a second, Henry Ramey Upcher, which served from 1894 to 1935. The first RNLI lifeboat was established at Sheringham in 1867.

During the second world war Sheringham lifeboat launched on a number of occasions to search for missing airmen.

Speed was essential and Mr Malster records how, receiving a 'shout' from the Coastguard early one morning, the honorary secretary did not waste time getting up but, using the telephone by his bed, made or received 21 telephone calls in 26 minutes, also despatching messengers, first to alert everyone needed for the launch of the boat and then to make arrangements for the reception of the airmen. In just over 50 minutes the lifeboat had picked up the six Polish airmen and brought them safely back to land.

The author also tells the story of how Sheringham lifeboat was called out on service to a Dutch vessel about an hour before midnight on December 31, 1950, the time when John 'Sparrow' Hardingham was due to retire as coxswain; the boat was returning from the casualty when, at one minute past midnight, 'Sparrow' turned to his second coxswain, Henry 'Downtide' West, his successor, and told him 'You're in charge now'. This very readable booklet is available price 90p plus 20p postage and packing from RNLI, Sheringham, Norfolk.

A new edition of The Story of the St David's Lifeboats by Desmond G.

Hampson and George W. Middleton, recently published, relates many rescues, lists the awards made to St David's lifeboatmen and gives information about the branch and guild. The first edition made a profit of about £1,000 which was given to the RNLI, and all profits from this second edition will also go to the lifeboat service. The booklet is available, price £1.25 including postage and packing, from Mrs Jill Rowley, Trefelli Farm, St David's, Haverfordwest, Dyfed.—J.D.

• Stability and Trim of Fishing Vessels by J. Anthony Hind (Fishing News Books, second edition, £7.50) is a book no small ship operator or designer should be without. It explains the mystique of ship stability and trim in a simple yet thorough manner which anyone can understand. As the title suggests, the bias is towards the fishing boat operator, but trim and stability problems are common to all vessels and there is much to be gleaned by operators and designers of all types of craft.

In view of the recent upsurge of interest in working sail, I particularly like the section on power to carry sail; I also applaud the author's decision not to over-complicate the issue with unnecessary detail, which, for those interested, is all readily available in the appendices together with relevant formulae and approximations. In general, a book offering much to seamen and designers alike.—K.C.T.

• To record the history of a river and the people living along its banks would produce, as Howard Biggs, the author of The River Medway, rightly says '. . . an immense volume if all the characters and their deeds and misdeeds were fully traced and analysed'. The River Medway (Terence Dalton, £5.95) is a surprisingly short book for such a vast subject in both time and physical scale.

Its brevity does not, however, mean that there is a little information on a lot of subjects. What Mr Biggs has done is to limit himself to 12 important aspects of the history, the people and the towns of the Medway; these are carefully researched and described in such a way that by the end of the book the Medway is an old friend.

The history of the river would be incomplete without mention of Sheerness lifeboat station, and Mr Biggs, a very long standing member of Broadstairs branch, does not let us down. To round off the story of the Medway he recounts the events of December 30, 1978, and the service by Sheerness lifeboat to Ma Jolie II for which Coxswain Charles Bowry was awarded a bar to his bronze medal.—S.J.G.

• In his book Lowestoft, East Coast Port (Terence Dalton, £4.95), Robert Malster. a local historian, pursues the making of the town with such knowledge and infectious enthusiasm that the reader cannot help but follow with both interest and enjoyment. The old town, the building of the harbour and its trade, the herring fishery and the trawling industry all have their place. So does the extraordinary impact of such men as Samuel Morton Peto who, in the 1840s, promised the people of Lowestoft that fish landed from the local fishing boats would be delivered fresh in Manchester, built a railway line from Lowestoft to Reedham and promoted a more direct rail line with London than had previously existed, improved the harbour and then set about encouraging trade with Denmark—and that was only a small part of his enterprise which reached out to other parts of Britain, South America, Africa and even Russia.

Robert Malster, who has received an RNLI Public Relations award for his extensive writing on lifeboats in his area, has, of course, included a section on the early lifeboats of Lowestoft. He tells of how Lionel Lukin, who had made a boat 'unimmergible' for lifesaving at Hamburgh in 1786, extended a seaside holiday in Lowestoft in 1807 to superintend the building of a new lifeboat; her design was based on that of local yawls and she was made 'unimmergible' with casks lashed inside her gunwales and her bow and stern, and with canvas-covered cork wales projecting on each side. This boat, Frances Ann, is thought to have been the first sailing lifeboat in the world; she was rigged with two masts and lugsails, like the yawls, and she was the forerunner of the Norfolk and Suffolk type of lifeboat.

A photograph of a painting of Frances Ann is just one of many fine illustrations published in this book.— J.D.

• For such welcoming people, the Channel Islanders have a remarkably inhospitable shoreline. David Couling's largely photographic catalogue of shipping mishaps and disasters, Wrecked on the Channel Islands (Stanford Maritime, £4.95), is a grim but fascinating reminder of the ignominy that even the most stately vessels are subject to once they are on the rocks.

Somewhat unconventionally the book begins with the most recent wrecks like those of the Orion oil rig and Point Law (for the service to each of which John Petit, then coxswain of St Peter Port lifeboat, received a gallantry award), and works backwards through history and many spectacular wreck and sal-" vage scenes. Sometimes the reader thirsts for a little more information, for instance as to how or why did a ship run aground, but the book is nevertheless an eye-catching and digestible publication.

—E.W-W.

• Once a professional forecaster, Alan Watts has for many years made the education of yachtsmen in the ways of the weather his particular concern, both as an author and a lecturer. His latest book. Cruising Weather (Nautical Books, Macmillan, £12.95) is written specifically for the cruising yachtsman passage making in coastal waters, potentially the most dangerous areas of all in bad weather.

The author's first advice is, listen to the forecasts. The first part of the book is devoted to how modern forecasts are compiled, how they may be obtained and matters arising from them, and includes chapters on terms used in forecasting, on gales, on waves, on fog, on temperature, on visibility and on your own observations. This part of the book, in fact, answers the questions what and how. Alan Watts then goes on, in the second part of the book, to answer the question why, giving explanations of weather systems and thus helping the yachtsman to understand the weather more deeply. The illustrations, which are many and clear, are by Peter Milne.

In the appendix is such useful information as the names of sea areas in other languages and important words in English, French and Spanish: for instance, gale warning, avis coup de vent, aviso de temporal. Here is a book to read carefully on winter evenings and to have on the yacht's bookshelf for the summer sailing—an excellent Christmas present for the skipper.—J.D.

• Do not be put off by the mathematics which appear on almost every page of Sailing Theory and Practice (new and revised edition) by C. A. Marchaj (Adlard Coles, Granada Publishing, £22.50). This is a book for any practical sailing man to read and then keep as a reference work. A more wide-ranging and thorough investigation of sailing matters would be hard to imagine, whether the reader is interested in the development of the rating rules from the first America's Cup race to the present day Olympic and International classes, sail theory in all its aspects, or waves and Tsu Hang's pitchpoling off the Horn: it is all there. Added interest is lent by the mention of famous yachts and designers to illustrate the points under discussion.

The book is beautifully printed in large format, well suited to the subject matter and diagrams, and it has an excellent index and a useful appendix.

It should be said that the original 1964 edition does still obtrude here and there, such as on page 254—sadly Queen Mary is no longer able to reach 30.5 knots—but this is a minor grouse over a first-rate book.—L.A.F.

• Children's books are not often reviewed in these columns, but The 1983 Cub Scout Annual includes a splendid article on the lifeboat service and is thoroughly recommended to all young supporters wanting to find out more about the RNLI.

Four Cub Scouts visited Troon lifeboat station last summer and asked Ian Johnson, coxswain/mechanic of the lifeboat, just the sort of questions any enquiring boy or girl might want to ask.

The cubs were shown over the lifeboat station and went out on an exercise in the lifeboat and the six-page feature is well illustrated with colour photographs of the visit.

The subjects of other articles in the annual range from Model Aircraft to British Reptiles and include a very unusual one on The Queen's Beasts, as well as a good guide to camping. In addition there are puzzles, games and an exciting map reading competition with prizes to be won. An ideal Christmas present, in fact for seven to 11 year olds.

Costing £2.75, the annual is available from all Scout shops as well as W. H.

Smiths, John Menzies and other newsagents.

—H.D..