Two Years Before The Mast
By: Dana, Richard Henry
Edition: 4th.
Series: Bantam Pathfinder Edition
Publisher: Bantam Books
Published: 1963
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 336
Subjects: Literature
Genres: TRavel; adventures
First sentence: I am unwilling to present this narrative to the public without a few words in explanation of my reasons for publishing it. Since Mr. Cooper's Pilot and Red Rover, there have been so many stories of sea life written, that I should really think it unjustifiable in me to add one to the number without being able to give reasons in some measure warranting me in so doing.
With the single exception, as I am quite confident, of Mr. Ames's entertaining, but hasty and desultory work, called Mariner's Sketches, all the books professing to give life at sea have been written by persons who have gained their experience as naval officers or passengers, and of these there are very few which are intended to be taken as narratives of facts.
Now, in the first place, the whole course of life and daily duties, the discipline, habits, and customs of a man-of-war are very different from those of the merchant service; and in the next place, however entertaining and well-written these books may be, and however accurately they may give sea life as it appears to their authors, it must still be plain to every one that a naval officer who goes to sea as a gentleman, "with his gloves on" (as the phrase is), and who associates only with his fellow-officers, and hardly speaks to a sailor except through a boat swain's mate, must take a very different view of the whole matter from that which would be taken by a common sailor.
Besides the interest which every one must feel in exhibitions of life in those forms in which he himself has never experienced it, there has been, of late years, a great deal of attention directed towards common seamen, and a strong sympathy awakened in their behalf. Yet I believe that, with the single exception which I have mentioned, there has not been a book written, professing to give their life and experiences, by one who has been of them, and can know what their life really is. A voice from the forecastle has hardly yet been heard.
In the following pages I design to give an accurate and authentic narrative of a little more than two years spent as a...
Description: TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST is a unique autobiography.- the portrait of a Harvard undergraduate who put off his tight frock coat and kid gloves for the loose ducks and checked shirt of an ordinary seaman. It is also the first book which realistically depicted the roughly-treated, poorly-paid man in the forecastle, and heralded a movement to improve his lot. But it lives, above all, as a matchless tale of adventure. For here, without adornment, is a square-rigger sailing the open seas: the squalls and calms and thunderstorms; the desolate beaches of little-known coasts; the strange and fascinating inhabitants of exotic ports-of-call. 
'ROUND THE HORN TO CALIFORNIA!
in 1834, at the end of his junior year at Harvard, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. was forced by severe illness to interrupt his studies. To regain his health this young Boston Brahmin signed aboard the brig PILGRIM, bound on a voyage 'round the Horn to California, thus leaving for two adventurous years the company of those "who never walked but one line from their cradles to their graves."
This book is the imperishable account of that voyage—the free and fascinating years when young Dana escaped the confining walls
of upper-class Boston society to join the hardy, democratic company of the foremast hands, breathe the fresh sea-winds, listen to waves breaking on the shores of exotic lands, cast anchor in harbors whose names were almost legend ...
Notes: With an introduction by Mark Van Doren.