Two Years Before the Mast [Paperback]

Tracing 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. 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. 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. As D. H. Lawrence proclaimed, "Dana's small book is a very great book.""Possesses . . . the romantic charm of Robinson Crusoe."
--Ralph Waldo EmersonJohn Seelye is a graduate research professor of American literature at the University of Florida. He is the author ofThe True Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,Mark Twain at the Movies,Prophetic Waters: The River in Early American Literature,Beautiful Machine: Rivers and the Early Republic,Memory's Nation: The Place of Plymouth Rock, andWar Games: Richard Harding Davis and the New Imperialism. He is also the consulting editor for Penguin Classics in American literature.Chapter I

I am unwilling to present this narrative to the public without a few words in explanation of my reasons for publishing it. Since Mr. Cooper’s Pilot and Red Rover, there have been so many stories of sea-life written, that I should really think it unjustifiable in me to add one to the number without being able to give reasons in some measure warranting me in so doing.

With the single exception, as I am quite confident, of Mr. Ames entertaining, but hasty and desultory work, called “Mariner’s Sketches,” all the books professing to give life at sea have been written by persons who have ls!