Two Years Before the Mast
By Richard H. Dana
The fourteenth of August was the day fixed upon for the sailing of the brig Pilgrim, on her voyage from Boston, around Cape Horn, to the Western coast of North America. As she was to get underway early in the afternoon, I made my appearance on board at noon, in full sea rig, with my chest, containing an outfit for a two or three-year voyage, which I had undertaken from a determination to cure, if possible, by an entire change of life, and by a long absence from books, with plenty of hard work, plain food, and open-air, a weakness of the eyes, which had obliged me to give up my studies, and which no medical aid seemed likely to remedy.
The change from the tight frock coat, silk cap, and kid gloves of an undergraduate at Harvard, to the loose duck trousers, checked shirt, and tarpaulin hat of a sailor, though somewhat of a transformation, was soon made; and I supposed that I should pass very well for a Jack tar. But it is impossible to deceive the practiced eye in these matters; and while I thought myself to be looking as salt as Neptune himself, I was, no doubt, known for a landsman by everyone on board as soon as I hove in sight.
A sailor has a peculiar cut to his clothes and a way of wearing them which a green hand can never get. The trousers, tight round the hips, and thence hanging long and loose round the feet, a superabundance of checked shirt, a low-crowned, well-varnished black hat, worn on the back of the head, with half a fathom of black ribbon hanging over the left eye, and a slip-tie to the black silk neckerchief, with sundry other minutiae, are signs, the want of which betrays the beginner at once.
Besides the points in my dress which were out of the way, doubtless my complexion and hands were quite enough to distinguish me from the regular salt who, with a sunburnt cheek, wide step, and rolling gait, swings his bronzed and toughened hands athwartships, half opened, as though just ready to grasp a rope.
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Richard H. Dana
Richard Henry Dana Jr. (August 1, 1815 – January 6, 1882) was an American lawyer and politician from Massachusetts, a descendant of a colonial family, who gained renown as the author of the classic American memoir Two Years Before the Mast. Both as a writer and as a lawyer, he was a champion of the downtrodden, from seamen to fugitive slaves and freedmen.
Early life and education
Dana was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on August 1, 1815, into a family that had settled in colonial America in 1640, counting Anne Bradstreet among its ancestors. His father was the poet and critic Richard Henry Dana Sr. As a boy, Dana studied in Cambridgeport under a strict schoolmaster named Samuel Barrett, alongside fellow Cambridge native and future writer James Russell Lowell. Barrett was infamous as a disciplinarian who punished his students for any infraction by flogging. He also often pulled students by their ears and, on one such occasion, nearly pulled Dana’s ear off, causing the boy’s father to protest enough that the practice was abolished.
In 1825, Dana enrolled in a private school overseen by Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom Dana later mildly praised as “a very pleasant instructor”, though he lacked a “system or discipline enough to ensure regular and vigorous study.” In July 1831, Dana enrolled at Harvard College, where in his freshman year his support of a student protest cost him a six-month suspension. In his junior year, he contracted measles, which in his case led to ophthalmia.
This worsening vision inspired him to take a sea voyage. But rather than going on a fashionable Grand Tour of Europe, he decided, despite his social standing, to enlist as a merchant seaman.
On August 14, 1834, he departed Boston aboard the brig Pilgrim, captained by Frank Thompson, bound for Alta California, at that time still a part of Mexico. This voyage would bring Dana to several settlements in California (including Monterey, San Buenaventura, San Pedro, San Juan Capistrano, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, and San Francisco). After witnessing Thompson’s sadistic practices, including a flogging on board the ship, he vowed that he would try to help improve the lot of the common seaman. The Pilgrim collected hides for shipment to Boston, and Dana spent much of his time in California at San Diego’s Point Loma curing hides and loading them onto the ship.
Dana’s description of his time on Point Loma depicted love and concern for the Hawaiians who worked there alongside him. He may have been predisposed to feel positively toward them by a previous stay in Andover, Massachusetts, among evangelicals who had embraced Hawaiians in New England and sent the first Protestant missionaries to Hawaii.
Wishing to return home sooner, Dana was reassigned by the ship’s owners to a different ship: the Alert. Dana gives the classic account of the return trip around Cape Horn in the middle of the Antarctic winter. He describes terrifying storms and profound beauty, giving vivid descriptions of icebergs, which he calls incomparable. He found the most incredible part of the journey the weeks and weeks it took to negotiate passage against winds and storms—all the while having to race up and down the ice-covered rigging to furl and unfurl sails. At one point he had an infected tooth, and his face swelled up so that he was unable to work for several days, despite the need for all hands. He also describes the scurvy that afflicts members of the crew after the rounding of the Horn. In White Jacket, Herman Melville wrote, “But if you want the best idea of Cape Horn, get my friend Dana’s unmatchable Two Years Before the Mast. But you can read, and so you must have read it. His chapters describing Cape Horn must have been written with an icicle.”
On September 22, 1836, Dana arrived back in Massachusetts. He then enrolled at what is now Harvard Law School, then called the Dane Law School after Nathan Dane. He graduated in 1837 and was admitted to the bar in 1840.
Richard H. Dana
