richard henry dana jr two years before the mast

It was the genesis of his vow to stand for justice. But when Dana witnessed the sadistic flogging of his shipmates, it prompted more than one of the most compelling scenes in American literature. Richard Henry Dana Jr.’s classic, Two Years Before the Mast, immortalized the harrowing voyage from Boston around Cape Horn to the remote coast of California. The ship might have vanished with the forgotten lives of its sailors. On an August day in 1834 a slight, nearsighted boy boarded a ship he had never seen before, joined a crew to whom his aristocratic family would have never spoken, and sailed where few Americans had ever been. From the introduction to his account of Dana’s “odyssey”: ’82, a former chief justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, is the ideal extra-literary biographer. Indeed, the voyage he undertook and recorded fired Dana (see Vita, March-April 1998, page 48) with hatred not only of the maltreatment of sailors, but also of slavery and other injustices-causes he addressed as a lawyer. Amestoy argues in Slavish Shore (Harvard, $35), the first full biography in more than half a century. But his literary legacy alone sells him short, Jeffrey L. ’66, survives in modern memory as the author of Two Years Before the Mast. Lawrence proclaimed, 'Dana's small book is a very great book.'.Richard Henry Dana Jr.

The result is an astonishing read, replete with vivid descriptions of storms, whales, and the ship's mad captain, terrible hardship and magical beauty, and fascinating historical detail, including an intriguing portrait of California before the gold rush. Richard Henry Dana is only nineteen when he abandons the patrician world of Boston and Harvard for an arduous voyage among real sailors, amid genuine danger.

But even to-day, when these terrible conditions no longer exist, people still love to read this classic of the sTracing an awe-inspiring oceanic route from Boston, around Cape Horn, to the California coast, Two Years Before the Mast is both a riveting story of adventure and the most eloquent, insightful account we have of life at sea in the early nineteenth century.

The author wrote this book as a protest against the hardships and cruelties endured by American sailors in the middle of the nineteenth century. Here is a sea story with a difference since every word of it is true and recounts the author's own personal experiences during the two arduous and adventures years, from 1834 to 1836, when he shipped before the mast as an able seaman. This book is a must for every boy - or girl! - who loves the sea, and its tales of hardship and adventure.

Richard henry dana jr two years before the mast