The easiest way for me to praise this book is to say that for any amateur yachtsman on the West Coast it is indispensable. Simple and direct in statement, with details of coasts and buoys and large-scale charts of many anchorages, it does not forget to tell you where to find water and stores, a post-office, a telephone, an inn. Its tidal information is particularly useful, as we found, for example, when, lying in Oban, we thought we should like to tackle the Falls of Lora. I got the new 1937 edition (8s. 6d.). Along with it, I purchased Brown’s Nautical Almanac (3s.), so that by certain calculations I should be able to tell the times of high and low tide fairly accurately on any day at any place. Most of its information went over my head and therefore thoroughly astonished me, for the knowledge man has got of the sea is very marvellous.

The Admiralty charts (4s. 6d. each) held an unending fascination. Hours were spent following imaginary voyages, checking up anchorages from the Sailing Directions. Nothing of all this remained in mind, though possibly a certain familiarity with the idea of sailing routes was engendered. The only other books I got together were two or three on bird and plant life and on geology.

Meantime the Crew had been arranging for the purchase of a good and suitable camera. She finally left the choice to our friend Fritz Wolcken, who does marvels with a Leica, and he got her a reasonably priced little box with which she was delighted, particularly as she did not require to remove it from its slung leather case while taking photographs—a useful consideration when scrambling over rocks or trying to keep upright on a plunging deck.

But photography is an art and we hardly knew the beginnings of it. Moreover, as we kept moving about from place to place, the Crew could not get her spools developed and delivered in time to benefit from her failures. Landscapes and seascapes that had looked magnificent to the eye turned out to be quite undistinguished in the print. And the whole realm of the constructed arty photograph remained—perhaps wisely—unexplored. On the whole we derived our greatest amusement from what are doubtless photographic failures, as most of the prints in this book make quite clear—and thus, perhaps, contrive to illustrate the story of the amateur.

Of course, in the beginning the Crew did not believe there were going to be many failures. And these she would offset by a first purchase of twenty spools. The spool used was an Afga Isopan, and the camera, by a special numbering device, took twelve pictures in. x in.) instead of the usual eight. A notebook with proper headings, showing the number of the spool, time exposure, distance, lens, was duly and neatly prepared (even if, in the stress of circumstance, entries were not always kept posted!). Finally (for she had her own catalogue hunting to do) she was delighted to discover that for the sum of 3s. 9d. she could send the undeveloped spool away and receive back the developed spool together with twelve photographs (enlargements) measuring 5 x 5 inches.