The Beagle and the H.M.S. California: Impressions

So, in our monthly flash-mob LibraryThing members catalogued TWO libraries.

We started with the 1905 H.M.S. California (USSCalifornia , talk), about 1500 books, divided between crew and officers' libraries.

That was done in about seven hours, so Jeremy dug up a reconstruction of the ship-board library of Darwin's famous Beagle ( HMSBeagle). They were only 126 books, but much harder to find and catalog.

I do these things to get insights into intellectual history. So, what did you learn cataloging them, or looking at them now?

Update: Jeremy started a "process" debrief http://www.librarything.com/topic/86277

From the USS California:
I only did one section of fiction for the Crew's Library. Couldn't help noticing lots of "Tales" from southern states.

The California's history section might have interested me, but it's amazing how little history there was other than ancient. To a great extent non-ancient history books were distributed around the geographical sections. This was especially true for Europe. The other parts of the world weigh heavily toward travelogues. I think this reflects contemporary taste, and indeed, to some degree, current ones.

Speaking of travelogues, isn't it interesting that Twain gets two books in the ship's library, and neither of them are fiction? Instead, we get Roughing It and The innocents abroad. Avoidance of controversial topics for Huckleberry Finn? Avoidance of sending the midshipmen into atheism and depression for the later stuff? :)

Incidentally, the California had two of Darwin's books—The Descent of Man and On the Origin of Species, both in the Ship's library.

The Beagle was interesting, but I think I would have gotten more out of it from seeing the entries in his journals. For example, the ship had a Greek New Testament according to his journal. Was he reading it? I presume I could find out if I read the journal. The bare cataloging fact wasn't enough.

I was impressed by the great number of narratives of other voyages the Beagle had, including that of William Dampier (of A Pirate of Exquisite Mind). I would have expected more books on natural history, but perhaps that's hindsight.

ETA missing paren

I was surprised how little literature was on the Beagle (just Milton?). And it's really striking to see the differences in the California's collection based on the tags frequencies.

Scientists and engineers have small souls.

Don't forget the copy of Sir Charles Grandison! That gave me the biggest chuckle of the evening.

Ah, yes! Indeed :-)

We should probably avoid drawing any conclusions from books that are not in the Beagle list, because it's a necessarily incomplete reconstruction: it only includes the works known to have been on the ship either because Darwin refers to them in his writings or because they contain annotations that can be dated to the voyage. There would certainly have been other works we don't know about because Darwin never cited them explicitly. FitzRoy mentions "upwards of 400 volumes" and we have 127 works in the list.

For California, I deliberately picked technical books to do. I was amused at the subject headings I took: "Useful arts" seem to cover engineering, first aid and bodybuilding, "Naval and Military Arts" were evidently not considered useful. Joking apart, the libraries suggest that there must have been good opportunities for crew members to continue their technical education on board. I suppose it was still the great age of self-help. Samuel Smiles is certainly present. The literature collection is strikingly modern - as well as all the Dickens and Thackeray there's a good solid chunk of popular American writers of the period, and contemporary bestsellers like Kipling (nine books) and Joseph Conrad (two). No Arnold Bennett, H.G. Wells or George Bernard Shaw, though!

Afterthought: according to Wikipedia, there were 830 officers and men on board. That means a bit less than two books per person. I wonder how much time they had available for reading? Probably not a lot.

Admittedly later, the 1941 Navy Regs allot heavy cruisers 900 books in their libraries. Looking at Navy regs, they seem to have lists of recommended non-fiction, reference, technical titles, but the fiction was purposefully kept unspecific.

Quote, again from 1941 but may reflect a precedent:
On ships not operating directly under the general supply system, fiction books are carried under title V and not title B. Nonfiction books are carried in title B. This permits the exchange of fiction between vessels of this class without paper work. The bureau does not duplicate fiction to destroyers in the same division, so that more titles may be available and exchanged.

PS,
Still looking for WWII sub library info.

I asked some people on Twitter if they could find out about current naval libraries. I'd love to catalog one, just for comparison's sake.

I cataloged the USS California's 'Fine Arts' sections and found it interesting how much Japanese related materials they kept. The Crew had two books on Jiu-jitsu and the Ship had one on Japanese physical training.

Is there any info on ship libraries from the 70s?. My dad served on 3 different carriers during Vietnam. I'd love to see what they had on board since he was a voracious reader.

Maybe we could do a representative library by decade for US Navy? Other navies encouraged to do same.

@mihess- Japan weighed heavy on the mind of the US Navy around 1900- then we get the Russo-Japanese War: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-japanese_war

They served in the Pacific. Don't know if the libraries differed substantially based on where they were likely to be.

benjclark Thank you for the information! I can see why it would be pertinent.

I wonder if the reading list aboard ships nowadays would contain more about the Middle East.

You can bet your bippee.

The Beagle's library recieved notice from Smithsonian Magazine, with some cool info --

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/you-can-rifle-through-same-library-char...

Direct link to the alphabetical link of 404 volumes, on the Darwin Online site itself (as linked from the Smithsonian article):

http://darwin-online.org.uk/BeagleLibrary/Beagle_Library_Catalogue.htm

And now Metafilter has taken note as well: http://www.metafilter.com/141634/Charles-Darwins-Beagle-library (with hat tip to http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/inkfish/2014/07/23/how-to-lose-a-finger-and-ot... )

You might already have these links for The Beagle catalog, but I stumbled across them and posting here for completion.

http://hyperallergic.com/137815/the-library-that-kept-darwin-company-for-five-ye...
http://darwin-online.org.uk/BeagleLibrary/Beagle_Library_Introduction.htm

You can browse our Ships list here:
http://www.librarything.com/legacylibraries/list/3862311989