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While attending Harvard as a young man, Richard Dana's eyesight became weak and his health declined. He decided that the austere prescription of salt air and plain hard work would be the cure. Not many would give up comfort and privilege, but for two years, Dana served as a common sailor, given no special treatment as the gentleman he was, and lived in the forecastle of the Alert, eating the mess of salt beef and common hardtack, risking his life and serving under a captain crueler than most. Dana was able to write in such a way as to re-create the life on board a sailing ship, down to the smallest details and that's what makes this book so real and touching. You can feel the cold of Tierra del Fuego, taste the salt beef, and feel the wind and damp. What's more amazing is that Dana's carefully-kept journal was lost along with his other mementos of his voyage when he landed back on shore in Boston, due to some tragic carelessness of someone he entrusted with his chest of belongings. Yet he was able to recreate his voyage in vivid detail and in some very excellent writing. Dana's later life as a lawyer was far from happy, though he made some critical contributions to maritime law. He died a poor and disappointed man, but left us the richer with his book.
Two Years Before the Mast is a remarkable book, part travelogue and part seafaring adventure. A great look at what life was really like on the merchant sailing ships of the first half of the 19th century, Two Years Before the Mast is also part suspense yarn, with the hero's return to his native land in serious doubt due to events beyond his control. Seen through the eyes of young man in his late teens who looks for both a cure for his measles and some real thrills, Richard Henry Dana treats us to his view of the west coast and the Californians as compared to his native, very urban and developed Yankee city of Boston. He finds them very different - but when he first visits San Francisco, the city is a single shack! This book was the guide for the many Americans who headed west for gold 15 years after its publication, too. As such it helped shape their settlement and exploration of the land. Dana's time aboard ship differs hugely from his comfortable home life in Boston. That he was willing to accept this, even embrace it, moves the book from a dry history to a real-life human interest story. His description of the sailing ships of the day involves many terms which few now will understand. Beyond that, the excitement of Two Years Before the Mast makes it a must-read for anyone in search of a young man's quest for real-life thrills at sea and in a new country.
Two Years Before the Mast is a book by the American author Richard Henry Dana, Jr., written after a two-year sea voyage starting in 1834 and published in 1840. It is of note that he did not set out to write Two Years Before the Mast as a sea adventure, but to highlight how poorly common sailors were treated on ships. It quickly became a best seller.
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