R Burnside, of Vincents Road, Kingsbridge, writes:

I would like to express my disappointment about the ­mistakes that occurred in your correspondent’s articles written about the William and Emma lifeboat disaster.

First he omits the names of two crew members who drowned from the report in the October 21 issue. He then writes another piece in the November 4 paper, puts in

the names of the two crew ­members missed out prev­iously, but manages to get the name of the lifeboat wrong, calling it the William and Mary – it was of course the William and Emma.

Then a piece is written about Edward Hannaford, and again the facts are wrong.

As the RNLI and the two lifeboats are very important to people locally, and as the story was of such significance to so many people, I would have thought care would have been taken as to the accuracy of said articles. I believe your ­correspondent used as ­reference the book written by Roger Barrett, so I am at a loss to understand how these ­mistakes were made.

I thank you for adding the piece about the two crew ­previously left out of the ­original article and for the ­apology about Edward Hannaford in the November 4 paper, but would it not have been better to get things right in the first place?