Mayday! Mayday!: The History of Sea Rescue Around Britain’s Coastal Waters


Book Description

Lifeboats occupy a particular place in people’s hearts as unpaid volunteers regularly take to their boats often in extremely adverse conditions to rescue others from the sea.




Mayday! Mayday!


Book Description




Historical Teleologies in the Modern World


Book Description

Historical Teleologies in the Modern World tracks the fragmentation and proliferation of teleological understandings of history – the notion that history had to be explained as a goal-directed process – in Europe and beyond throughout the 19th and into the 20th century. Historical teleologies have profoundly informed a variety of other disciplines, including modern philosophy, natural history, literature, humanitarian and religious philanthropism, the political thought and practice of revolution, emancipation, imperialism, colonialism and anti-colonialism, the conceptualization of universal humankind, and the understanding of modernity in general. By exploring the extension and plurality of historical teleology, the essays in this volume revise the history of historicity in the modern period. Historical Teleologies in the Modern World casts doubt on the idea that a single, if powerful, conception of time could function as the unifying principle of all modern historicity, instead pursuing an investigation of the plurality of modern historicities and its underlying structures. By bringing together Western and non-Western histories, this book provides the first extended treatment of the idea of historical teleology. It will be of great value to students and scholars of modern global and intellectual history.




The RAF Air-Sea Rescue Service in the Second World War


Book Description

When the Second World War began in 1939 it was thought that it would be fought along the same lines as the First World War, with the Allied air forces operating from both Britain and France. With the fall of Britain’s Northern European Allies in May 1940, all that changed. From then onwards, RAF aircraft operating over enemy and enemy-held territory necessitated flights across both the North Sea and the English Channel. This meant that aircrew in difficulties would be forced to come down in both of these bodies of water. Therefore it was essential that some form of rescue service be made available to fish these airman from the water. But there were no aircraft in existence at that time that were designed for such a task: initially all that could be done was to use land ‘planes to help locate anyone in the water, drop a dinghy to them, and then guide a boat to their position. Obviously a quicker and more reliable means of rescue was needed, and this came in the shape of the Supermarine Walrus, an amphibian airplane that could land on both sea and land. Several Flights of these airplanes were set up around the coast of Britain, concentrated mainly around the south and southeast of England. The Air Sea Rescue airmen did a magnificent job from 1941-45, rescuing hundreds of downed RAF and USAAF aircrew. It took a special type of airman to undertake these rescues – and another kind of courage. As the war in North Africa developed, Walrus aircraft were needed in the Mediterranean, and later on either side of the Italian coast. Walrus squadrons operated just as successfully in this theater as around Britain. Aircrew operating over any stretch of water could always count on the ASR boys coming to their aid. This is their story.




Search and Rescue


Book Description

About civil, maritime and aeronautical search and rescue services.




Deadliest Sea


Book Description

Soon after 2:00 a.m. on Easter morning 2008, the fishing trawler Alaska Ranger began taking on water in the middle of the frigid Bering Sea. While the first mate broadcast Mayday calls to a remote Coast Guard station more than eight hundred miles away, the men on the ship’s icy deck scrambled to inflate life rafts and activate beacon lights. By 4:30 a.m., most of the forty-seven crew members were in the water. Many knew that if they weren’t rescued soon, they would drown or freeze to death. Two Coast Guard helicopter rescue teams were woken up in the middle of the night to save the crew of the Alaska Ranger. Many of the men thought the mission would be routine. They were wrong. The helicopter teams battled snow squalls, enormous swells, and gale-force winds as they tried to fulfill one guiding principle: save as many as possible. Deadliest Sea is a daring and mesmerizing adventure tale that chronicles the power of nature against man. Veteran journalist Kalee Thompson recounts the harrowing stories of both the rescuers and the rescued while paying tribute to the courage, tenacity, and skill of the dedicated people who risk their lives for the lives of others.




Mayday! Mayday!


Book Description

A thirty-foot yacht, adrift well out to sea, sends, "MAYDAY! MAYDAY! Please respond to our plea!" Hearing this call for help, the United States Coast Guard leaps into action. A team of four highly trained rescue specialists head out in an H-60 Jayhawk helicopter. Battling fierce conditions, the Coast Guard team finally locates the disabled boat, rescues the crew, treats injured passengers, and carries them back to safety. Complemented by dramatic, striking illustrations, Chris L. Demarest's text brings into vivid focus one of the many important jobs performed by the U.S. Coast Guard. A detailed author's note provides additional information about the search-and-rescue process, making this a terrific book for any school or home library.




The Cruising Almanac 2025


Book Description

The Cruising Almanac remains the perfect onboard companion for cruising sailors, providing a hard-copy source of information packed with data to help passage planning and for quick reference to hundreds of ports and marinas. The Almanac encompasses Northwest Europe from the Shetlands to Gibraltar and from the Baltic to the west coast of Ireland. This 2025 edition includes some changes to the presentation of essential information to make it more readily accessible. The Netherlands section has been revised so that the format conforms to the other regions. A new chapter for Northwest Spain has been created to allow more extensive overall coverage of the Spanish and Portuguese Atlantic coasts. 2025 tide tables for 47 standard ports are included in a separate booklet. Updating of the Almanac continues throughout the year, with corrections published monthly on the Cruising Association website Almanac corrections page.




Rescue at Sea


Book Description

Rescue at Sea is both a reference and a general interest book that deals with all elements of organised coastal lifesaving and rescue at sea from the earliest times to the present day. Since mankind first took to the sea in boats the waters have claimed a heavy toll. For many centuries there were no organised efforts to offer assistance to shipwrecked mariners, and hapless victims died in appalling conditions within sight and sound of horrified bystanders ashore. The earliest known attempts at rescue and recovery were undertaken in China where the use of river lifeboats was first recorded in 1708. It would be more than 50 years before such organised humanitarian efforts emerged in Europe but in 1767 the 'Institution for the Recovery of Drowned Persons' was established in The Netherlands while in 1774 the English took up the cause with the establishment of the 'Royal Humane Society'. From these early beginnings came such organisations as the Shipwreck Institution (UK), the Société Humaine de Boulogne (France), the Asilo dos Naufragos (Portugal) and The Massachusetts Humane Society (USA). The middle history (1850s to 1950s) of lifesaving at sea is well documented and read but here, for the first time, the whole story, form the 1700s to 2003, is presented in one volume that encompasses the history of coastal lifesaving, the evolution of coastal rescue craft, and the development of a world-wide network of rescue services. Of particular significance is the comprehensive profiling of the most prominent of today's sea rescue organisations around the world from the Åland Islands to Uruguay. Canadian Coast Guard coxswain Clayton Evans has spent a decade researching, sourcing and bringing together material from all over the world to create a reference book like none other that successfully handles both the wonders of modern lifeboat technology and the emotive stories of heroism and tragedy from all eras.