Two years before the mast
Subtitle: a personal narrative of life at sea
By: by Richard Henry Dana, Jr. Edited from the original manuscript and from the first ed., with journals and letters of 1834-1836 and 1859-1860, and notes by John Haskell Kemble. With original illus. by Robert A. Weinstein, and illustrated from contemporary paintings, prints, and charts.
Publisher: Ward Ritchie Press [distributed exclusively by Lane Book Co., Menlo Park, Calif.]
Published: 1964
Place of publication: Los Angeles
Language: eng
Number of pages: 552
Subjects: Voyages and travels.; Seafaring life.
Description: Richard Henry Dana (1815-1882) of Boston left his studies at Harvard in 1834 in the hope that a sea voyage would aid his failing eyesight. He shipped out of Boston as a common seaman on board the brig Pilgrim bound for the Pacific, and returned to Massachusetts two years later. Completing his education, Dana became a leader of the American bar, an expert on maritime law, and a life-long advocate of the rights of the merchant seamen he had come to know on the Pilgrim and other vessels. Two years before the mast (1911) is based on the diary Dana kept while at sea. First published in 1841, it is one of America's most famous accounts of life at sea. It contains a rare and detailed account of life on the California coast a decade before the Gold Rush revolutionized the region's culture and society. Dana chronicles stops at the ports of Monterey, San Pedro, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Santa Clara. He describes the lives of sailors in the ports and their work of hide-curing on the beaches, and he gives close attention to the daily life of the peoples of California: Hispanic, Native American, and European.