Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative, by Richard Henry Dana
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Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative, by Richard Henry Dana
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Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative, by Richard Henry Dana - Amazon Sales Rank: #854432 in Books
- Published on: 2015-11-04
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.21" h x 1.25" w x 6.14" l, 2.16 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 578 pages
Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative, by Richard Henry Dana
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Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. Dana's two years on a sailing ship in the 1830s makes modern hi-tech world boring. By Judie Fernandez Our technological world makes us forget what life was like when men, by sheer force of will and dangerous physical teamwork, could use the forces of nature to travel thousands of miles across oceans on wooden ships under fabric sails without electronics or comforts. What surprised me was the beauty of the writing by a young man in the 1830s. Dana's descriptions of raising the anchor and sails to glide out of California harbors, the four month journey trying to round Cape Horn in winter, the misery beneath decks, and the excitement as the ship headed north in the Atlantic toward home in Massachusetts created vivid scenes that still resonate in my mind. After his return home to Harvard and its law school, Dana dedicated his life to improving the slave-like lives of the sailors. I highly recommend this book to escape from our screens.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Lee Scuppers and Top Gallant By Paying Guest I read part of this in Jr HS, then all of it after I graduated from college; my Shakespeare teacher (38 plays in the full year course) asked me, as he read it, why so much reference to the "lee scuppers." For a beginning sailor like me, an easy answer: those are the drains that fill because of the heel of the boat away from windward.I recall how Dana records the loss of their first crewman off South America; this, from a small crew, perhaps 15? I should re-read. Then I recall the great joy of their tea and molasses, or after reefing the topsail, some grog (with rum). The weather around Cape Horn was abysmal, with big seas and sleet and snow, but they were on their way to pick up hides dropped down from the high coasts of certain California ports. Dana observes that if the Californians ever learn to make shoes, their services will no longer be required: shipping hides, taking them around Cape Horn to New England to be made into shoes, which are then shipped around Cape Horn to be sold to the Californians.The fear of the captain and mates, the appreciation of the cook and his tea, the hard work and danger aloft--these remain with me fifty years after reading Dana
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. The book I most enjoyed reading . . . By R. B. Gearon . . . ever! And I'm four score and eight months more.Richard Henry Dana set out on a voyage that would take him from Boston, Massachusetts, to a California that few could identify with today. At the latter, there was no-one there! Well, not many. San Diego, for instance, was a sleepy little harbour; at least it was until his and other ships from time to time put in there, when the serious business of loading hides for Boston got under way. He even spent about six months ashore, preparing hides. Dana found even San Francisco's beautiful harbour almost devoid of human activity. Not that he would have considered that an unusual state, for he was not to know what lay ahead for it. Los Angeles was a town of 20,000 souls. And this was not so long ago: 1832-34. Crikey! Only 100 years before I was born!The scruffy lightweight little ship Pilgrim took him round Cape Horn; seemingly without much incident, for he makes no big deal of that phase of his voyage. But we do learn from him, in amazing detail, of the day-to-day workings of, not only this vessel, but also of the Alert, the smartest ship on the Boston-California run in which he served on the return leg of his voyage. He has the ability to put us on board with himself, as if we were of the crew itself. I could feel the rope in my hands and below my feet, as I sped, with frozen fingers, to the topmost yard. I felt the cold blasts off icebergs of the Southern Ocean. I sweated in the tropic. I witnessed a brutal flogging by one captain, and suffered the indifference and wile of an uncaring other. All of this, as he an ordinary seaman, a choice he made, rather than as a passenger, which he could easily have afforded to be. His family station ashore must have been influential, for in one incident on the return leg of his voyage, he was able to face off his captain and make him back down. Which is not to say he made a habit of 'pulling rank', for this was the sole occasion we hear of his doing so.Dana had interrupted his studies at Harvard in order to take on this voyage. As a brilliant student, he had been on course to a promising career, but finding his eyesight failing, he decided that he needed fresh air and a good dose of hard graft. Thus, he joined the crew of Pilgrim, in the forecastle -- before the mast.I lost a deal of sleep over this account. I found it hard to put down, not least for the plain language in which Dana expresses himself so eloquently. He does not show off, by using a long word where a short one will do the job. He does not bore, with an excess of those twin abhorrences, the adjective and adverb. He does use the occasional Latin phrase, which he assumes needs no translation to English, but not excessively. Notably, to the annoyance of an earlier reviewer of the work, he uses many nautical terms, but to me, mainly a landsman, they were not only necessary, but acceptable. More than acceptable, for I learned by their use. After all, this is an account of the life of a seaman, at sea, under sail. Any term I needed defined, I found in Kindle's dictionary. Well, in the main, as it were.In his introduction to this edition, Dana's son tells us that his father, on his return to Boston, had entrusted his trunk -- sea chest? -- to some unnamed friend. But Dana's trust proved misplaced, for the trustee somehow managed to lose it and its contents. Luckily for us, as readers, Dana had not lost the notebook in which he had kept a detailed log of his voyage, for, according to his son's account, rather than leave it in the trunk, he had hung on to it. But Richard Henry Dana makes no reference to this in his narrative. If, as I have read elsewhere, his trunk had indeed made off with his notebook, then the author must have had a phenomenal memory to have been able to recall such detail of a voyage he later wrote into what would become this fascinating book. He had made daily entries from the outset, with the purpose of writing them into an account of the voyage he was about to undertake.When I consider that Richard Henry Dana, notwithstanding his failing eyesight, had been comfortably engaged in study at Harvard, only to interrupt that study to take on what he knew would be a rigorous life before the mast, I realise the young man must have been mightily brave. He was rewarded for his bravery, though, for with sight reinvigorated, he returned to Harvard and resumed his studies. He became a lawyer, specialising in maritime law. As a lawyer in private practice, he never forgot his fellow seamen, those he had sailed with, even others he had never met, for he often represented one or other of them, always either at reduced fee, or for no fee. He became famous, but never rich, even though in later life he successfully dipped into the political arena.Dana rounds off his narrative with a brief account of his return visit to California, this time as a passenger. He later visited Europe and England, at which latter he promoted his book. To far greater benefit to himself, it seems, than had been the case with its original publication through his American publisher.In this edition of the great classic, Dana's son writes an end-piece, in which he brings us up to date -- at his time of writing, early 1900s -- with the fate of certain people Dana senior had sailed with, of the two ships in which he had sailed, and of events relevant to his two years before the mast and later.If you have, or have had, a connection with the sea, you will thrill to this account. Most will do so, even without such connection. Read it; you will enjoy it.Finally, I allow myself a plug for my own book, a New Zealand novel, which, in part, also details a sea voyage, outward on a sloop, home on board a ketch. It is called Kohima Station, by R B Gearon, and available only for Kindle. Reviews, all five-star, appear only on Amazon UK's site.R B Gearon
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