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    Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea
    Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea
    Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea
    Audiobook17 hours

    Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea

    Written by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.

    Narrated by Kirby Heyborne

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    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.

    While at Harvard College, Dana had an attack of the measles that affected his vision. Thinking it might help his sight, Dana, rather than going on a Grand Tour as most of his fellow classmates traditionally did (and unable to afford it anyway), and being something of a nonconformist, left Harvard to enlist as a common sailor on a voyage around Cape Horn on the brig Pilgrim. He returned to Massachusetts two years later aboard the Alert (which left California sooner than the Pilgrim).
    He kept a diary throughout the voyage, and, after returning, he wrote a book based on his experiences. Recognized as an American classic, Two Years Before the Mast was published the same year that Dana was admitted to the bar.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateDec 31, 2010
    ISBN9781452670317
    Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea

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    Reviews for Two Years Before the Mast

    4.5/5

    43 ratings27 reviews

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    • 5/5
      An amazing glimpse into 1800s, this is the autobiographical account of two years in the life of Richard Henry Dana from 1834 to 1836.Leaving America he sails on the Pilgrim and its voyage heads from Boston to South America and around Cape Horn to California where he spends a season in San Diego preparing hides. He then boards the Alert for the return journey as the Pilgrim was not due to return for another 12 months.The book is written in the language of the day at at times can be quite formal compared to the writing of today, that being said, it isn't at all a difficult book to read.The descriptions of life at sea, corporal punishment, 1830s California, people and circumstances are all an interesting window into the past making it worth reading even if one is not particularly interested in sailing itself. An enjoyable non fiction read.
    • 5/5
      This is one of the great classics of both seafaring and early California history. In 1834 Richard Henry Dana, a Harvard college student, left his studies and went to sea on a merchant ship. For two years he worked as a common sailor and kept a journal. Not only is it a rousing adventure story of life at sea, but also a fascinating depiction of a way of life long gone past. This factual narrative is sophisticated in detail in every area: seaman's culture, characters, weather, hard hard conditions and work, techniques required, amazing feats of strength and endurance. In addition, his personal feelings as he views natural phenomena and human spirit are deeply moving. It's a book that was well ahead of its time.
    • 5/5
      Contains fascinating account of life as a sailor in merchant mariner service. There are many fascinating stories about California coastal towns during a time of Mexican governance.
    • 4/5
      I never thought I'd enjoy a book about sailing, especially from the early 1800s, but this was a really good book! Once I got past the technical sailing jargon (and there's a lot) I really appreciated the look into the life of a career sailor of the time and the hardships they endured. (Guys, they had to make all of their own clothes...using canvas and tar.) The details of the year spent in California as it was still part of Mexico was pretty captivating. Apparently they didn't treat the native people any better than the Anglos. (I read this as part of Harvard Classics, v.23)
    • 4/5
      This is the story of Richard Henry Dana Jr. adventure from his jornals written in 1834. It contains excerpts from his journal he kept for two years after leaving harvard and embarking as a seaman abourd the Pilgrim and later transfering to the Alert sailing vessels. The descriptions of the inhabitants of the region before becoming California are very interesting as is the highly detailed descriptions of the sailing and life of a seaman abourd a merchant vessel engaged with the hide trad and crossing Cape Horn. Overal an enjoyable educational read for anyone interested in sailing ships and early America.
    • 5/5
      This is an American classic. In its day was one of the most widely read, and important, books ever published. It recounts a young Harvard mans decision to take time off school and "cut his teeth" aboard a merchant sailing vessel on a 2-year tour to California between 1834-1836. He lived "before the mast", meaning his quarters were up forward with the lowly grunts, where he had no special privileges, the captains and mates quarters behind the mast. Dana set out to live just like a line sailor, but also secretly document the poor conditions sailors lived under - he would go on to become a famous Boston lawyer who fought for sailors rights.The story is a chronological narrative of the journey around Cape Horn, arriving in California, years spent collecting and processing cow hides, journey home again around Cape Horn. Life aboard a sailing vessel was often extraordinary as a matter of course and so the day to day events are fascinating. The dangers of the sea and sailing, the relations of the crew and officers, the unusual ships and people met along the way, the technical jargon of sailing. It is very well written, vivid and accurate, a better and more believable description of a seaman's life I've never read.What makes the book so important is that Dana's book is the first to describe California, very few Americans had ever been to California. He went from port to port and details a lot about specific places like San Diego, San Francisco, Monterey, etc.. in the 1830s these "ports", at the largest, were settlements of a few hundred Mexicans and Indians and utter wilderness around. San Francisco had one American, and one building. When gold was found the 49ers went west and Dana's book was the bible for describing what California was like. When Dana returned to San Francisco in 1856, it was a city of over 100,000 and he was famous, just about everyone in the city had read it. The descriptions of places just before the mass migrations began, while it was still wilderness, are fascinating. The last chapter fast forwards 24 years later as a postscript when Dana returns to California and describes his own astonishment at the modern changes, and recounts what happened to all the people he knew along the way.
    • 4/5
      I read this aloud to my children when we were studying California history. It is a fascinating story written as a memoir of a young man who went to sea as a way to cure his weak eyes! It was a rough wake-up call for him, but he became a man and his eyes improved. He details life aboard a sailing ship in the 1800s. His description of the trip around the Horn is harrowing. I don't know how anyone survived, let alone did it more than once. Very interesting chapters on buying hides of beef in California, visiting the Missions and the Ranchos.
    • 4/5
      It dragged a bit in the middle, but I found it very interesting. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the California coast; the afterword with the description of the same area in 1859 was fascinating. The descriptions of the ship-board work rapidly lost me - studding-sails and top-gallant masts and various yards blend together in my mind and I have no idea what was actually going on. The e-version I had was lacking images - the foreword promised diagrams of the sails and rigging, but I didn't get them. The characters were interesting and beautifully depicted. I really wish Dana had continued writing, though his son explains what occupied his time instead (in a second afterword).
    • 4/5
       A harrowing tale of the life of a common sailor in 1840. The author, an undergraduate at Harvard, took to the sea because he thought it might improve his eyesight (after a bout with measles). The work is backbreaking; his witness to a flogging and the merciless discipline of the sea unforgettable. He returns two years later and, as he says, just in time before the brutality of the life of a common sailor would have consumed and overtaken him permanently. A moving plea for more compassionate treatment of common workers.
    • 5/5
      I love Dana's Two Years Before the Mast not only for its look into the working life aboard merchant ships but also for the glimpse of pre-statehood California. This memoir was groundbreaking in its time, with the general middle class of colonial/Eastern knowing little of the actual conditions to the sailors aboard a merchant vessel. It describes in detail the extreme latitude that captains took with little or no consequence once the vessel was out of its home port. Through all the indignities suffered by merchant seamen, once back home it was very difficult to call to task a captain in the court of law and receive any remedy for unlawful actions while at sea. Dana's account, with being an ivy league educated person of some class stature, had more weight that made shipping companies, their owners, and the general public aware of the indignities that were occurring. In terms of literature itself, Dana's journaling is well written, and lends a certain style to his narrative that could otherwise be a boring list of things, and people and places. The way in which he describes the vistas of California, especially place I have been myself, make me feel a nostalgia for the time of sea going trade and feel the same romanticism that seemed to pull Dana to sign on as a merchant sailor in the first place, instead of take a leisurely tour of Europe post graduation from Harvard.While his account really only gives the first hand account of two different Captains, you can see the vast difference from over zealous warden to respectful but disciplined employer and really get a quick picture of how the life of the average working sailor was greatly affected by the demeanor of its captain. We are lucky to have this account, which was so regarded for its description of California that it became the defacto book during the gold rush days and made Dana somewhat a celebrity when he revisited San Francisco 24 years later. I think this should be on everyone's radar to read at least once, and that people who live in and love California particularly should be acquainted with Two Years Before the Mast.
    • 3/5
      Richard Henry Dana tells the story of his trip, subtitled "A Sailor's Life at Sea", in the brig Pilgrim out of Boston in 1834. Only 19 years old, the Harvard student signed on as a deck hand. For the next two years he experienced a sailor's rugged life, traveling around Cape Horn, visiting Mexico's California territory a full 15 years before it became a U.S. state, and returning home in 1836. The Pilgrim was 'a swearing ship', in which the brutal and choleric Captain Thompson imposed his discipline by bad language, and the Sabbath, normally a kind of token rest day for the crew, was never observed, except by the black African cook reading his bible all day alone in his galley. Apparently Captain Thompson was from the same mold as Herman Wouk's Captain Queeg. The everyday details of his journey are surprisingly vivid. On their first week at sea, they spot a pirate ship, and must outrun it on a moonless night. Dolphins follow the ship as it heads for Cape Horn. The Captain's patience is tried by a lazy first mate who refuses to watch for icebergs. And when a man falls overboard, the captain must assure the crew that a thorough search was conducted. It is an exciting story made interesting by the well-educated young man who chose to go to sea as a shipmate 'before the mast' rather than a cabin passenger in the officers' quarters.
    • 2/5
      I had wanted to read this book for a long time, but it ended up being quite disappointing. There is some interesting history here, told from a first-person perspective, particularly the stops in Santa Barbara and up the California coast. But so much of the writing is entirely bland. There are almost no characters! Dana sees, or at least describes, the other seamen mostly as abstractions. His instinct for social justice is admirable, but can be tedious from a modern perspective. > To do the fish justice, there is nothing more beautiful than the dolphin when swimming a few feet below the surface, on a bright day. It is the most elegantly formed, and also the quickest fish, in salt water; and the rays of the sun striking upon it, in its rapid and changing motions, reflected from the water, make it look like a stray beam from a rainbow.> "To work hard, live hard, die hard, and go to hell after all, would be hard indeed!"> The Californians are an idle, thriftless people, and can make nothing for themselves. The country abounds in grapes, yet they buy bad wines made in Boston and brought round by us, at an immense price, and retail it among themselves at a real (12½ cents) by the small wine-glass.> "If you want to know what I flog you for, I'll tell you. It's because I like to do it!—because I like to do it!—It suits me! That's what I do it for!" … [I] vowed that if God should ever give me the means, I would do something to redress the grievances and relieve the sufferings of that poor class of beings, of whom I then was one.
    • 3/5
      Mr. Dana's writing style (sometimes charming, sometimes fascinating but most often tedious) perhaps unintentionally provides the reader with a true feel for 19th century sailor's life on the sea.I would have rated this work much higher if it were half its length. That said, he provides an invaluable insight into early Californian history, and for that reason alone should not be missed.
    • 4/5
      A journey from Boston around South America, then traveling the west coast of California before it was part of America - they were buying hides and selling goods.#14 on the National Geographic Adventure list of “The 100 greatest adventure books of all time”I read it aloud some years ago with my son when he was in 7th grade. Well written, though sometimes we got stuck in the description of the rigging - our copy would have benefited from a diagram of the ship's rigging. Since we were living in California it was very interesting to read about the early history of Los Angeles and other coastal cities.
    • 5/5
      Good time period book with early history first accounts of San Diego, Monterey and San Francisco. This book made people aware what sort of life sailors really lived and helped improve the lot of future sailors by this being made public.

      Mr Dana was advised by his doctor to get out of the office and do something do to failing health and spent two years crewing on this tall ship. The story is a result of that.
    • 4/5
      Excellent book. Even though written several generations ago, the prose was fresh and easy to read. Wonderful desciption of life at sea during the time of sailing merchant vessels without being overdone with flowery language.
    • 3/5
      Highly enjoyable despite being packed with sailing jargon and almost entirely lacking any narrative tension. Also, it doesn't have as much flogging as it could, but what can you do? Still a fun world to live in for the duration.
    • 4/5
      It is difficult to give any objective reasons why I enjoyed this book so much. It has so much unusual terminology in it, that, despite a glossary and a diagram of a ship's rigging, it is often confusing. It does not describe an era or a location that I have any particular interest in (in fact the opposite - I tend to shun books which are totally American). But it is nevertheless a rivetting read. The prose flies, in the same way that the sails took the wind, and the reader wants to know what happens next. From a social history perspective, it is, without doubt, a pretty unique example, covering life for those "before the mast".I first read this book almost 40 years ago, as a teenager. I enjoyed it then, and I have enjoyed it now. Thoroughly recommended!
    • 3/5
      Living in San Juan Capistrano, this book is required reading for the kids in our schools. Dana's name is all over the place...Dana Point, Dana Hills High School, etc.After 18 years here I finally got around to reading it. I found it very interesting both from the picture of life aboard a sailing ship and for its picture of California before the gold rush brought the first great wave of (American) change to California. I've always been one to wonder how a given place was before settlement, development, and fences came, so I really liked that part of the book. San Francisco was a single trading post, Santa Barbara and Monterey the main cities on the coast, San Pedro just a (questionable) place to anchor and take an stagecoach ride to Rancho Los Angeles, just the Mission in my home of San Juan, and San Diego basically a small trading town with a great harbor. My edition also has the (20?) years after epilogue at the end that talks of his return to the coast and the changes that had occured.This is a great book for those interested in what coastal California was like as part of Mexico, and of course, for those interested in sailing and seafaring tales.
    • 5/5
      Amazing book written by a man who lived it. A detailed snapshot of American history.This book more then any, tells in detail the life of early 19th century sailors. It also shows the real condition of the California when it was a poor, barren and empty property of Mexico.
    • 5/5
      Entirely engrossing account of sea-voyaging to California in 1836 to collect and prepare hides
    • 4/5
      This was a really excellent book. It's a true story, written by a young man who took time off his studies at Harvard to ship as a common seaman on a merchant marine in 1834.

      Upon his return, he wrote the book to, in part, counter the popular, romanticized ideas of life at sea. Dana said that most sea literature of the time was written from the perspective of an officer or captain, and wanted to point out that the view from the forecastle was quite different. He set out to show the reality of the day-to-day drudgery of a sailor's life, and also to advocate for justice and fair treatment for sailors.

      Although to describe it as "an account of day-to-day drudgery" doesn't sound that exciting, it's an amazingly fascinating book, full of the details of a now-vanished way of life - both at sea, and on the coast of California, where his merchant ship spent long toil acquiring their cargo of steer hides to bring back at great risk, around Cape Horn and back to Boston.

      My only complaint, from a reader's perspective, is that at times Dana is vague about the personal details of some of his shipmates and acquaintances - probably out of courtesy, as he was publishing while most of the men he speaks of were still alive. (Although not everyone is shown in the most flattering of lights). The book was an enormous best-seller (much more so than he expected) at the time, and it includes an Afterword written 24 years later - and it's rather amusing, how, in that section, he is much more careful to speak well of people!
    • 2/5
      Snooze for me..._moby dick_ without the poetry.
    • 5/5
      171 year later this book still reads as a crackling adventure memoir. Suffering from bad eyesight and ennui, Boston student Richard Dana ships out to California on a merchant brig hoping that some hard work and California air would set him right.During his two year voyage Dana crosses the equator four times, rounds Cape Horn in the winter and personally moves thousands of cattle hide from land to the ship and back to a storage depot. Dana endures harsh captains, fatiguing work, illness, isolation from his old life and the constant storms of California winters. He also wins the friendship of many on the coast, sees many a sublime and beautiful sight and cures his dissatisfaction with the urban college life! Dana catalogues the soon to disappear California hide trade, along with villages such as San Diego and Pueblo de Los Angeles.This book shot to fame during the California Gold Rush, as it was the only popular and readily available book that described California upon its publication. After the conclusion of his narrative of the 1834 voyage, Dana includes a 1858 return to an urbanized and prosperous Yankee California wholly unlike that he left twenty years earlier.Whether you're into nautical adventure, California history or just a good tale, I'd highly recommend picking this work up.
    • 3/5
      Richard Henry Dana's book "Two Years Before the Mast" actually did remind me of the ocean -- my interest level in the book ebbed and flowed like the tides. I found much of his tale of sailing to be somewhat mundane, but every once in a while, he'll get into a story about a crew member that is utterly fascinating. I particularly enjoyed reading about his experiences in wild California... which was the very highlight of the book for me. Overall, this book would be best for someone with a particular interest in sailing (as opposed to a general interest in exploration.)
    • 4/5
      This is the true story of R.H. Dana's two years as a common sailor. The "before the mast" refers to the sailor's quarters in the forecastle. The book is based on the diary he kept during the voyage.R.H. Dana was from a good family, and was an undergraduate at Harvard when he had an attack of measles which affected his eyesight. He was unable to read, and decided to enlist as a merchant seaman to rest his eyes and give himself something to do.The book recounts the voyage from Boston to California, the time in California going from port to port and loading cow hides, and the voyage back to Boston. The sea voyages are by far the most interesting parts of the book, especially the return voyage around cape horn, which is vividly portrayed. By contrast, the time in California gets a bit monotonous, and I think should have been summarised.
    • 4/5
      I have read only the parts on California, but found them very vivid, though perhaps unjust to the Californios.