Name: Two Years Before the Mast
ISBN: 9781548523480

Richard H. Dana

Sailing to California from Boston around Cape Horn, Two Years Before the Mast is both an adventure and an eloquent account of life at sea in the early nineteenth century. Richard Henry Dana is only nineteen when he escapes the patrician world of Boston and Harvard for the arduous voyage. The result is an astonishing book, filled with vivid descriptions of storms, whales, and the ship's mad captain, terrible hardship and magical beauty, and fascinating historical detail.

Two Years Before the Mast

Richard Henry Dana

A Sailor's Life at Sea

Two Years before the Mast

John Nettles

Really good book. Not the most exciting of reads, but the pace helps convey the monotony and toil that is 1840s sea life on a merchant ship. The most memorable parts of this book were Dana's descriptions of (very) young California, the eclectic crew especially that Hawaiins, and the brief passage about his emotions on the trip home, one of the happiest things I've ever read. The book is more descriptive than it is plot-filled, sort of like The Journals of Lewis and Clark, which I also enjoyed.

Andrew John Kinney

This is the original American sea novel. It is quite interesting in many ways, not least with its description of California under Mexican rule, prior to the Mexican-American War. But it falls far short of Melville writings about the sea, despite having a pretty good pace in terms of story-telling.

Two Years Before the Mast

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