www.emeraude-cruises.com The discovery of three postcards from the early 1900s at Parisian flea market in 1999 is the start of a unique journey for Eric Merlin....Read more!

1. TRUTH • OPINION
ALESSANDRO FALCIAI
Enjoying the last of the
summer wine with the
owner of Adamas II.
KNOWLEDGE • IDEAS
EMERAUDE
Eric Merlin’s unique journey
to build a replica of a 1900s
paddleboat using an old postcard.
& S U P E R YA C H T O W N E R I N S I G H T
THE FULL MONTE
Part of a new wave of marina
communities, Porto Montenegro
is more than just a place to berth.
QUANTIFYING QUALITY
Should we do more to
quantify a yacht’s true value
before it goes on the market?

3. A dreamer
and a boat
lover
– WORDS BY ANGELA AUDRETSCH
AND IMAGES COURTESY OF ERIC MERLIN
The discovery of three postcards from the early 1900s at a Parisian
flea market in 1999 was the start of a unique journey for Eric Merlin.
A self-confessed dreamer and boat lover, Merlin’s imagination was
captured by one of the postcard’s discernible paddleboats, Emeraude.
He began a quest to uncover her history and build a replica using
only these fading sepia images. Now also the owner of the faithfully
restored 41.5m minesweeper M/Y Calisto, Merlin talks to Angela
Audretsch about Emeraude, his first labour of love.

4. 26
On a crisp December afternoon Eric
Merlin found himself engrossed in
one of his favourite pastimes: browsing
the legendary Parisian flea market
Les Puces de Saint-Ouen for postcards
of colonial Vietnam or Indochina.
Not expecting to find anything
new, Merlin was surprised to pick
up three postcards in a box marked
‘Indochine’, dated 1916, 1917 and
1919. Two of them showed paddle
steamers far in the distance in Halong
Bay and the other one featured an
image of the boats at Hai Phong
Port in the north of Vietnam. As the
founder of one of south-east Asia’s
leading travel agencies, Exotissimo
Travel, and general lover of historic
boats, Merlin was drawn to these
old-world steamboats. “I was quite
fascinated to see that at the beginning
of the last century, there were tourist
boats,” he says, telling me that using a
magnifying glass, he was able to make
out two names – Emeraude and Perle.
“My first thought was – ‘Where are
these boats?’ My dream was to come
back to Vietnam and find these boats
in the mud.”
After months of looking at the
postcards and daydreaming about the
boats they portrayed, Merlin decided
to use the postcards as the basis
for designing a replica paddleboat,
in order to offer tourist cruises on
Halong Bay that recaptured the
glamour and romance of a bygone
colonial era. The project began in
2002, with construction commencing
in January 2003 at a boatyard in
Haiphong, northern Vietnam’s most
important seaport. But for a man as
meticulous about detail as Merlin,
this was not enough. After learning
the name of the company that
owned one of the boats – Emeraude
– and the name of the man that
owned the company – Paul Roque
– he attempted the daunting task of
tracking down the family to find out
even more about the history of the
boat he was replicating.
“I sent out 1,220 letters to all of
the Roques in the French telephone
directory,” Merlin tells me. “I received
a lot of phone calls from Roques,
maybe twenty to thirty. They all
commented on how fascinating the
story was, they would tell me about
their grandfather who went to Hong
Kong or anyone with a connection
to Asia, but crucially they were not
connected to Emeraude.” Eventually,
though, he received the call he had
been waiting for: “The man on the end
of the phone said, ‘Don’t look further,
we are the family you are talking about
and I will introduce you to my father,
Xavier, who is the son of Paul Roque.’”
In July 2003, just five months before
the new Emeraude was completed,
Merlin sat down with Xavier Roque,
the 76-year-old son of Paul Roque.
“He told me about the family history,
he showed me the china from the
original Emeraude and he gave me an
original copy of the brochure for me
to copy,” recalls Merlin. On talking
to Xavier, Merlin found out that the
story of the Roque family in Vietnam
began way before Paul Roque came
to the country and purchased a fleet
of paddleboats (Emeraude, Perle, Ruby
and Sapphire) in Halong Bay. In fact,
Paul was following in the footsteps
of his father and uncles who had
come to the region during its very
beginnings as a colony in the late1800s. This entrepreneurial spirit
was something Merlin could relate
to. “Like the Roques, I also looked
beyond France to the wider world and
all of its possibilities for, shall we say,
‘entrepreneuring’,” he muses. “One
can easily do business at home, and in
my family – in my parents’ generation
and my grandparents’ generation
– they did. I was looking for a new
challenge, in a new part of the world,
just as the Roques did.”
Opening page: Merlin runs Emeraude as a passenger
vessel in Halong Bay.
Above: Eric Merlin and a model of Emeraude.
Right: The three postcards that Merlin purchased at
the Paris flea market in 1999.

5. 27

6. 28
“A THREAD THAT IS COMMON TO
BOTH EMERAUDE AND CALISTO
IS THE TREMENDOUS BACKSTORY THAT EACH OF THESE
VESSELS HAD. FOR THE ENTIRE
TIME I WORKED ON BOTH, THE
STORIES OF THE PEOPLE AND
THE VOYAGES PLAYED OVER
AND OVER IN MY IMAGINATION.”
– ERIC MERLIN, OWNER OF
EMERAUDE
Replicating and building a 55m 1906
paddleboat using just a postcard was a new
and welcome challenge for Merlin and
the mystery that lay behind Emeraude and
her story made this kind of project all the
more enticing for him. “I love this kind of
old history, how with something like this,
you grab a little piece of a story and it can
take you in any direction,” he says. “Open
an old 1925 phone book, take any name,
pull the string and do the homework,
and there is a story. Behind this Emeraude
story, there is a family, a company and
a big history of people who were very
courageous. It’s very interesting.”
Today, Merlin is no stranger to epic
reconstruction projects with a historical
edge. In 2007 he purchased a 44.5m
former 1944 YMS-1 class minesweeper
called Calisto from Thomas Loel
Guinness, a member of the famous Irish
brewing family, who had completely
transformed her into a private yacht.
When Merlin took possession, Calisto
underwent another significant,
historically sensitive refit at a yard in
Singapore to restore her to her former
glory and she is now a family yacht as
well as a successful charter yacht. “A
thread that is common to both Emeraude
and Calisto is the tremendous backstory that each of these vessels had,”
Merlin says to me. “For the entire time
I worked on both, the stories of the
people and the voyages played over and
over in my imagination. I’ve always felt
a responsibility to the heritage of these
vessels, and to the people who would
cruise on them. I feel like a caretaker of
a great story as much as the owner of a
vessel, and so I have this responsibility to
produce great chapters for tomorrow!”
With three decks, 38 full-view cabins
and one suite, as well as an 80-seat
restaurant, two bars, shops, massage
rooms, a swimming platform and
entertainment area, Merlin’s Emeraude is
a slight step away from the original. “We
wanted to build the new version a bit
different,” Merlin explains. “The original
Emeraude was smaller, and it carried
freight and mail on the main deck. There
were no more than six cabins and we
needed much more. The paddle wheel
in the back was nice, but not workable
today.” Merlin designed the boat based on
the postcards, trying to make the shape
as similar to the original boat as possible.
Even though the paddle wheel would be
redundant, Merlin was determined to
incorporate it, so Emeraude’s huge paddle
wheel opens to reveal a swimming deck,
allowing passengers to swim in the calm
waters of Halong Bay. “Being faithful to
the original design of the boat and, at the
same time, cognizant of the expectations
our passengers would have today was a
great challenge,” admits Merlin. “I love
the paddle wheel, and I love the steam

7. 30
engine, but neither of those would make
sense today, not when we have diesel as
an alternative. But we did manage to
maintain the silhouette of a dreamy old
vessel. The atmosphere is very much of
another era.”
The original plan was to rebuild a
full fleet of four sister ships – Emeraude,
Perle, Ruby and Sapphire – but Merlin
admits that that dream has had to be put
to one side owing to the tough market
conditions. Not one to stop dreaming
completely though, Merlin has another
plan. “The barb of that original story
of the Emeraude is still sunk in me, and
I have a dream to dive on the wreck
of the original boat, which went down
in 1937,” he says with a smile. “I know
where it sunk and the engine was a
steam engine, so the big mass of metal
should be easy to locate. Now I just
need the time and energy to put all that
together with professional divers and
all. That kind of thing can sometimes be
complicated in Vietnam, so I don’t quite
have the energy to take care of this yet.
But it could be fun. We could retrieve
chinaware, the brass bell, maybe … you
see, I am not a businessman, I am a
dreamer and a boat lover!”
The Jewels of Halong Bay: A Tale of
Adventure in French Indochina and a
Curious History of the Emeraude (Nha Xuat
Ban Lao Dong), a book on the story of
the Roque family and Emeraude written
by long-time Hanoi resident Pam Scott
and based on Merlin’s research, is out
now.
“I LOVE THIS KIND OF
OLD HISTORY, HOW WITH
SOMETHING LIKE THIS,
YOU GRAB A LITTLE
PIECE OF A STORY AND
IT CAN TAKE YOU IN ANY
DIRECTION.”
– ERIC MERLIN, OWNER
OF EMERAUDE
Previous page: (top left) A rowboat returning to one
of the original paddleboats in Halong Bay; (bottom
left) A boatload of French tourists in excursion
in Halong Bay in the early 1900s; (bottom right)
Emeraude leaving the dock in Hai Pong.
Top: The new Emeraude is now exclusively a
passenger vessle.
Bottom: Merlin still wants to dive the wreck of the
original Emeraude one day.
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