Two Years Before the Mast

In 1834, Richard Henry Dana Jr. left the comforts of Boston for the hardships and abuses of the most exploited segment of the American working class.Ê DanaÕs account of his passage around Cape Horn to California, and back, is a remarkable portrait of the seagoing life: the day-to-day routines and conversations, the sailors who manned the ship, the brutality of incompetent officers, and the style of life in the newly emerging coastal towns of California.Ê
As Thomas Philbrick discusses in his introduction, the publicÕs sympathy for the plight of mariners, which was aroused by the book, eventually faded, but Two Years Before the Mast forever changed readersÕ romanticized perceptions of life at sea and inaugurated a lasting tradition of realism and concern for human values.