Richard Henry Dana

Two Years Before the Mast is Richard Henry Dana Jr.’s captivating account of life as a common sailor on board a merchant ship in the early 1830s. An iconic maritime memoir said to have influenced Herman Melville, this remains one of America’s greatest seafaring tales....

Two Years Before the Mast is an 1840 memoir by the author Richard Henry Dana. A Harvard graduate, he spent the years 1834 to 1836 as a sailor on a merchant ship on a voyage from Boston to California. The journey took them past Cape Horn on the Tierra del Fuego archipelago....

Dana, a law student turned sailor for health reasons, sailed in 1834 on the brig Pilgrim for a voyage from Boston around Cape Horn to California....

This is the true story of a Harvard graduate who forsook his studies for two years of the grueling life of an ordinary seaman....

The book is many things: a history, travelogue, a social documentary and an adventure story....