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

Description

In 1834, Richard Henry Dana Jr. left the comforts of Boston for the hardships and abuses of the most exploited segment of the American working class. Dana’s account of his passage around Cape Horn to California, and back, is a remarkable portrait of the seagoing life: the day-to-day routines and conversations, the sailors who manned the ship, the brutality of incompetent officers, and the style of life in the newly emerging coastal towns of California.

As Thomas Philbrick discusses in his introduction, the public’s sympathy for the plight of mariners, which was aroused by the book, eventually faded, but Two Years Before the Mast forever changed readers’ romanticized perceptions of life at sea and inaugurated a lasting tradition of realism and concern for human values.
Binding Type: Paperback
Contributors: Richard Henry Dana,Thomas Philbrick (Introduction by)
Published: 12/17/1981
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
ISBN: 9780140390087
Pages: 576
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 1.40″ H x 7.70″ L x 5.10″ W

About the Author
Thomas Philbrick is professor emeritus of English at the University of Pittsburgh.