Where Books meet Boats

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THESE PAGES

One of five living rooms conceptualized by Mario La Via for the 416-foot Privilege One, this library is a grand space for reflection and relaxation. Situated on a gyroscopic platform, the space is designed for the utmost in comfort.

BOOKS & boats

CULTIVATING THE ONBOARD LIBRARY

Two days after Christmas, in 1831, a young man set sail from England’s Plymouth Harbor. He was just 22 and his voyage did not begin well. “The misery I endured from seasickness is far beyond what I ever guessed at,” he would write. But he had some consolation: his onboard library, one that famously helped change our entire perception of humanity.

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DESIGN

ABOVE

A grand formal library designed by custom furniture designer Tim Gosling.

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� By all accounts, Charles Darwin had about 400 books with him when he set off

with Captain Robert FitzRoy aboard the H.M.S. Beagle for a circumnavigation; he expected to be gone two years. But the Beagle would not return to England for a full half-decade from the voyage that changed the course of scientific knowledge forever.

Not only were Darwin’s observations supported by the reading matter he kept close at hand in his cabin, he was always eager for more. In July 1833, during a stop at Montevideo, he wrote to his sister Catherine asking for more books, which he called, “those most valuable of all valuable things.” His list included John Fleming’s The Philosophy of Zoology; Thomas Pennant’s History of Quadrupeds; Sir Humphry Davy’s Consolations in Travel; William Scoresby’s An Account of the Arctic Regions; William Burchell’s Travels in the Interior of Southern Africa; and George Scrope’s Considerations on Volcanos. Just think how Darwin would have loved a Kindle!

Despite today’s prolific availability of e-readers, reading nooks and/or entire rooms dedicated to the printed word remain a constant request to yacht designers. “As a matter of fact,” says the Canada-based naval architect Greg Marshall, “we’re building three such libraries on megayachts right now. Yes, because of Kindle, owners are packing less books, but they are increasing the number of spaces dedicated to reading and to being able to tune out for a few hours in a comfy seat, preferably with a wet bar close at hand for tea and coffee. Not long ago some of these similar spaces were called ‘Onboard Internet Cafés’, but now they are truly libraries.”

The first onboard library Marshall currently has under construction is in New Zealand aboard a 164-foot vessel. Measuring about 300-square-feet with full-height windows and easy chairs, it’s in a prime position on the main deck, made possible

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MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING?

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Greg Marshall’s rendering of a doubleheight atrium features two levels of bookshelves with a glass sculpture as the focal point.

Books & Boats: Cultivating the Onboard Library

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Gosling suggests using limited space to incorporate a desk with shelves for books.

Exotic woods are used to decorative advantage.

because the owner’s stateroom is on the bridge deck one level above. It’s a short stroll from the main salon and, if necessary, the library can double as an extra guest cabin.

The second library Marshall’s creating is a bit larger, at about 500-square-feet. It’s also situated on the main deck, but rises two stories, giving it a double-height ceiling, where a skylight provides enough natural lighting to read the finest print. If you stand on the balcony, you face two levels of books, as well as a biomorphic, blue glass sculpture whose squiggles cast lovely shadows along the door casings.

Marshall’s third library under construction is situated on a sun deck. Main deck or sun deck, Marshall took pains to design all three libraries with spectacular views.

They’re places he says where one can “reflect big and look out at the world, as well as into books.”

A new library that Florida-based designer Luiz DeBasto has in production on the forward main deck of a 102-footer is more multi-use than a dedicated space. For that reason, DeBasto’s library will be livelier by design, not quite what one would think of as a sanctum sanctorum. Large sofas invite group conversations, and a large HD screen commands more movies on the shelves than there are books. The bookshelf itself rotates ingeniously much like a door, floor to ceiling, to reveal an AV equipment rack. A large desk and chairs for the owner and his wife complete the layout. ▶ So why are we seeing bookshelves, reading nooks, and whole libraries on megayachts now that the age of Kindle is upon us? Depending on your longitude and latitude, you can download any of 1,330,984 books with just a click.

Why take up that precious physical space? Is it because all those fat, physical books might add solid Gutenbergian soundproofing to the bulwarks?

Is it perhaps because the Instagram account “Hot Dudes Reading” now has 618,000 followers of doubtlessly comparable hotness?

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DESIGN

ABOVE

The luxurious main salon aboard Reverie features built-in book shelving with traditional brass fiddles.

ABOVE BELOW

Cozy reading nooks, like this one aboard a Vicem Vulcan 46, provide a retreat from the rest of the world.

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Architect and yachtsman Clement Van Buren sees a deeper connection between libraries and megayachts, one that may indicate more than a passing trend. “On a yacht you’re exploring the world on a literal basis, engaging with different peoples and cultures and in a library you’re doing basically the same thing; exploring through books,” he says.

The French architect Henri Labrouste brought this connection between travel and reading to perhaps its greatest expression in his glass-and-iron reading rooms in Paris, the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève (1838–50) and the Bibliothèque nationale (1859– 75), which both have the appearance of the sheds in train stations. I believe he would have had no trouble understanding the difference between a library and a Kindle: That a library is the repository of civilization, an academy separate from the world but also meant to engage with it, where one can have a conversation with the world’s authors past and present, as well as talk quietly with friends on a deeper level.

This is exactly the brief the owner of the 248-foot Northern Star gave architect and interior designer Pauline Nunns. “My client collected many beautifully-illustrated and historical books, many being treasures that were gifted by friends, and he certainly enjoyed reading. My client also thought it would be a good idea to have a library for private meetings with the captain, or business associates, or whomever, rather than in the big sitting rooms. With something always happening around the rest of the yacht where we had everything from a beauty salon to scuba diving, it was important to be able to get away from guests once in a while to a space that was ‘invitation only’. That’s why we situated his library with its two large red leather chesterfields directly off his study and the adjacent master – so he can go get papers from there if needed,” she says. Nunns began her career restoring the libraries of 18th century country estates in the U.K. “I remember being able to stand inside the fireplaces they were so grand.”

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ERNEST HEMINGWAY

IF YOU BUILD IT…

NOVELIST

In the Northern Star library, the focal point is not a fireplace but a yacht model set among bookshelves of limed oak. Nunns had specialist painters create a background around the model to make it more picture-like. While a large actual window with red-checked curtains plays off the chesterfields, the yacht model and surrounding picture itself acts as a kind of bonus view where there was none before. There’s also an ingenious passageway for the crew that opens on a library mini-bar and provides access to the master for tidying up unobtrusively.

Soft, low-level lighting, a good sound system, a coffee table convertible for backgammon or chess, a creamy carpet, a flatscreen, and even some false books where there was no depth for real ones complete the scene.

“The owner delighted in arranging the books on the shelves,” says Nunns. “It was his contribution to the décor.”

Books & Boats: Cultivating the Onboard Library

There is no friend as loyal as a book.

▶ Some of the rules for building a seagoing library have something in common with the way you’d build a library in any grand, semi-public space: it’s not just about acquiring the books. Rick Gekoski is a rare-book dealer, author and broadcaster.

His London-based dealership, RA Gekoski Booksellers, is one of the world’s leading specialists in modern English, Irish and American literature. An ebullient American who has made Britain his home since the 1960s, Gekoski has never furnished a boat with books, but he knows how he would approach the task: “It’s like a garden: first you have to plant it with the right plants, then you have to tend it.” He despairs of some of the libraries he sees in places such as luxury hotels. “The books will be ill-chosen, they’ve been bought at jumble sales, and within a year it looks like hell.”

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Northern Star’s library features a yacht model set among limed oak shelves housing treasured historical books.

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DESIGN

MAINTENANCE

There’s no reason a well-chosen shipboard library couldn’t be a wonderful thing.

“Who’s it for? What do they want to read?” he asks. “You need advice, first of all, from a bookseller.” First editions and the like – Gekoski’s line – are out. “You want books to read. I don’t like leather-bound books; and you have to maintain leather anyway, certainly if you are near salt.” ▶ For those books that do happen to be expensive, such as leather-bound first editions, Marshall recommends taking the precaution of designing shelves that are closed, where the condition of the books can be monitored and stabilized with humidifiers or dehumidifiers as the case may be.

British bespoke furniture designer Tim Gosling echoes Marshall’s advice for temperature control, noting that air-conditioning tends to dry books out. Strangely enough, Gosling says, after speaking at length with the British Museum (whom he notes uses a commercially available micro crystalline wax for preserving book spines), he learned that the most ideal conditions for storing rare books in terms of climate are found in the United Kingdom. “The steady not-too-hot and not-too-cold gives a good constant and there is enough humidity to prevent the books from drying out and becoming brittle, but not enough to make them brown spot.”

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Andrew Winch used books as a way to impart a sense of wonder and mystery on the Feadship Sea Owl where faux books in a 3D setting denote doors.

The atmosphere of a library, with a nod to Harry Potter, forms the basis for the trompe l’oeil hallway ceiling.

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Books & Boats: Cultivating the Onboard Library

SPACE PLANNING THIS PAGE

Pull-out drawers, such as these designed by Tim Gosling, are optimal for displaying large folios. Gosling also recommends incorporating display areas for displaying decorative objects.

Alas, your yacht may want to venture beyond the Isles, daresay into more tropical climes, so temperature control is an important element to consider long before bringing your collection of rare books onboard.

▶ When designing for the cozy reading nook or grand soaring library, as with any space planning, it is best to consult with a naval architect early on in the process. “In terms of flow,” says Gosling, “it’s important at the outset to have an idea of the size of the collection and the way in which it’s going to be catalogued. If there are large folios, for example, that need to be laid down flat, where are these going to go and how will this work into the design. How will the top books be reached?” Gosling describes a recently completed double-height library space in the U.S. that has cantilevered walkways around the upper part to access the top books.

“Working with the naval architect, I would look at the lighting and air conditioning layouts first,” he continues. “You don’t want to have a direct cold draft down the front of the cases.”

Lighting also plays a factor in whether the space will be multiuse and be used for viewing television or movies or also for relaxation and dining.

“The lighting is critical,” says Gosling. “It is important that the lighting used does not ‘cook the books’ so to speak. The last thing you want is huge amounts of heat concentrated onto the edges of the spines. LED is brilliant, however, there are only a few really good LEDs in long strips with a warm light that looks good in library spaces. The last thing you want is bright white and the dots of the LEDs reflecting off all the bookcases.”

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DESIGN

STORAGE

WHAT TO READ?

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Building bookcases that curve to follow the hull lines maximzes space, as seen aboard the library Gosling designed for the 296-foot Nero.

▶ “There are the obvious issues,” Gosling says of the foremost considerations for storage of books onboard, such as “rails to stop the books from falling out.” He also advises that the bookcase be designed so that the books sit into a ridge at the bottom and do not slide.

“The best way of keeping rare books if they are portfolio or Elephant Folio size is not on their spines,” he says, “as it puts too much pressure on them. Designing pull-outs so the books are kept flat is the best way to preserve their integrity.”

Gosling also recommends incorporating display areas for ephemera and rare objects such as maps, globes, letters or portrait photographs of famous artists or composers, for example. If these are built into the layout, they add to the character of the ship’s library.

▶ So what are the best books to have onboard? Gekoski says he would choose classics of detective fiction, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dickens, George Eliot... “I’d encourage my guests to take home with them what they’d started reading on board; then I’d replace what they took with new books. It would be fabulous! I’d want people to have trouble deciding what to read. They won’t do that with ‘beautiful’ books,” he says.

Ideally, reading with such absorption would take place in two easy chairs facing each other, according to Marshall, with an ottoman in the middle for setting up a quiet chess game or backgammon. The positioning of the two chairs emphasizes that the library is for individuals to share this public space. As such, his libraries are distinct from the private owner’s study or lounge.

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Books & Boats: Cultivating the Onboard Library

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The Feadshipbuilt Lady Christine with interior design by Rodney Black features a generous library space to display the owner’s collection.

There are, indeed are other ways in which a vessel can have a literary bent.

Sherakhan, a 230-foot expedition charter yacht, nods towards the bookish even in her name: Shere Khan is the marvelous tiger created by Rudyard Kipling in his Jungle Book, and the young daughter of Jan Verkerk, the yacht’s owner and general manager, was a fan of the Disney film. Each of the 12 suites on board the yacht is named after a famous author, and there is something for every taste. The master suite is suitably named Ernest Hemingway; the VIP suite crosses an ocean, as it’s named after the 19th century French realist Émile Zola. Jane Austen, Tolstoy and even Jean M. Auel (author of The Clan of the Cave Bear) and Dan Brown get a spot. Of course, the most committed sailors might choose the Joseph Conrad suite, for Conrad was a great seaman himself. Each cabin comes equipped with a set of its author’s books.

“It gives something original to the yacht,” Verkerk says. “People like that. It’s very simple to put a letter or a number on a room; this gives them a good feeling. Finding out that their books are in there – that just makes the boat a little bit special.”

He also makes sure that they always have books on board that will tell guests about where the ship is headed. If she’s off to Antarctica, for instance, the expedition leader will have his or her own special reading requirements: perhaps Sara Wheeler’s wonderful Terra Incognita; perhaps a classic such as Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s The Worst Journey in the World, which describes the conditions its author endured on a 1911 expedition to collect eggs of the emperor penguin in Antarctica.

Jonny Horsfield, of H2 Yacht Design, admits that in 25 years of building boats, he’s not yet been called upon to build a proper library – but if he were, he knows it would have to be something fine. “A wine room is not just a place to store the wine. It would be the same with a library; it would need to be pretty impressive. I’d envision a double-height library, one with a big ladder; it would be a great place for a bit of showmanship.”

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