Books with author Richard Henry Dana Jr.

In this nineteenth-century nautical memoir, a Harvard man sails around the tip of South America to California—and returns with this classic tale of adventure. In 1834, nineteen-year-old Richard Henry Dana left Harvard University to enlist as a deckhand on a brig sailing from Boston to the California coast. For the next two years, he recorded the terrifying storms, awe-inspiring beauty, and dreadful hardships of the journey in a diary he would later expand into this riveting memoir of “the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is.” Dana spares no detail in portraying the wretched conditions he endured and the cruelty of the ship’s captain, but he also paints vivid, unforgettable pictures of natural wonders such as icebergs and schools of migrating whales. His descriptions of the missions and presidios of pre–Gold Rush California captured the imagination of the country when the book was first published in 1840, and they serve as valuable historical documentation to this day. An instant classic and inspiration for contemporaries such as Herman Melville, Two Years Before the Mast is one of the most remarkable and influential adventure stories in American literature. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

This special edition of TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST includes updates 24 and 76 years after the initial voyage. Richard Dana writes so that the reader can feel the icy Chilean waters, taste the hardtack, and feel whip upon your flogged back. Take the voyage with him as he leaves Harvard to travel with a mad captain around South America to the coasts of California. Feel the same passions that influenced Herman Melville in writing his book Moby Dick and made D.H. Lawrence declare, “Dana's small book is a very great book.”

"Two Years Before the Mast" is a memoir by the American author Richard Henry Dana, Jr., published in 1840, having been written after a two-year sea voyage starting in 1834. A film adaptation under the same name was released in 1946. In 1911, Dana's son, Richard Henry Dana III, added an introduction detailing the "subsequent story and fate of the vessels, and of some of the persons with whom the reader is made acquainted." With the onset of the 1849 California Gold Rush, Dana's book was one of the few books in existence that described California, adding greatly to the book's readership as well as Dana's renown and legacy. When he returned to San Francisco in 1859 he was treated as a minor celebrity. To this day the book is regarded as a valuable historical resource describing 1830s California.The geographic headland he wrote of, and the adjacent city, are named Dana Point for him.(this pre-1923 publication has been converted from its original publication

The fourteenth of August was the day fixed upon for the sailing of the brig Pilgrim on her voyage from Boston round Cape Horn to the western coast of North America. As she was to get under weigh early in the afternoon, I made my appearance on board at twelve o’clock, in full sea-rig, and with my chest, containing an outfit for a two or three years’ 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 and study, a weakness of the eyes, which had obliged me to give up my pursuits, and which no medical aid seemed likely to cure.The change from the tight dress coat, silk cap and kid gloves of an undergraduate at Cambridge, to the loose duck trowsers, 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 practised eye in these matters; and while I supposed myself to be looking as salt as Neptune himself, I was, no doubt, known for a landsman by every one 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 trowsers, 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 peculiar tie to the black silk neckerchief, with sundry other minutiæ, are signs, the want of which betray the beginner, at once. Besides the points in my dress which were out of the way, doubtless my complexion and hands were 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 open, as though just ready to grasp a rope.“With all my imperfections on my head,” I joined the crew, and we hauled out into the stream, and came to anchor for the night.- Taken from "Two Years Before The Mast" written by Richard Henry Dana

"Two Years Before the Mast" is the true story of Richard Henry Dana's voyage aboard the "Pilgrim" on a trip around Cape Horn during the years 1834 to 1836. Intended as an account of "the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is", "Two Years Before the Mast" details a voyage from Boston to San Francisco to trade goods from the east for cow hides. "Two Years Before the Mast" is a classic depiction of maritime life in the 19th century. Included in this edition is the appendix, "Twenty-Four Years After" written and added by the author in 1869.

"Two Years Before the Mast" is the true story of Richard Henry Dana's voyage aboard the "Pilgrim" on a trip around Cape Horn during the years 1834 to 1836. Intended as an account of "the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is", "Two Years Before the Mast" details a voyage from Boston to San Francisco to trade goods from the east for cow hides. "Two Years Before the Mast" is a classic depiction of maritime life in the 19th century. Included in this edition is the appendix, "Twenty-Four Years After" written and added by the author in 1869.

"Two Years Before the Mast" is the true story of Richard Henry Dana's voyage aboard the "Pilgrim" on a trip around Cape Horn during the years 1834 to 1836. Intended as an account of "the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is", "Two Years Before the Mast" details a voyage from Boston to San Francisco to trade goods from the east for cow hides. "Two Years Before the Mast" is a classic depiction of maritime life in the 19th century. Included in this edition is the appendix, "Twenty-Four Years After" written and added by the author in 1869.

"Two Years Before the Mast" is the true story of Richard Henry Dana's voyage aboard the "Pilgrim" on a trip around Cape Horn during the years 1834 to 1836. Intended as an account of "the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is", "Two Years Before the Mast" details a voyage from Boston to San Francisco to trade goods from the east for cow hides. "Two Years Before the Mast" is a classic depiction of maritime life in the 19th century. Included in this edition is the appendix, "Twenty-Four Years After" written and added by the author in 1869.

"Two Years Before the Mast" is the true story of Richard Henry Dana's voyage aboard the "Pilgrim" on a trip around Cape Horn during the years 1834 to 1836. Intended as an account of "the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is", "Two Years Before the Mast" details a voyage from Boston to San Francisco to trade goods from the east for cow hides. "Two Years Before the Mast" is a classic depiction of maritime life in the 19th century. Included in this edition is the appendix, "Twenty-Four Years After" written and added by the author in 1869.

"Two Years Before the Mast" is the true story of Richard Henry Dana's voyage aboard the "Pilgrim" on a trip around Cape Horn during the years 1834 to 1836. Intended as an account of "the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is", "Two Years Before the Mast" details a voyage from Boston to San Francisco to trade goods from the east for cow hides. "Two Years Before the Mast" is a classic depiction of maritime life in the 19th century. Included in this edition is the appendix, "Twenty-Four Years After" written and added by the author in 1869.

"Two Years Before the Mast" is the true story of Richard Henry Dana's voyage aboard the "Pilgrim" on a trip around Cape Horn during the years 1834 to 1836. Intended as an account of "the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is", "Two Years Before the Mast" details a voyage from Boston to San Francisco to trade goods from the east for cow hides. "Two Years Before the Mast" is a classic depiction of maritime life in the 19th century. Included in this edition is the appendix, "Twenty-Four Years After" written and added by the author in 1869.

"Two Years Before the Mast" is the true story of Richard Henry Dana's voyage aboard the "Pilgrim" on a trip around Cape Horn during the years 1834 to 1836. Intended as an account of "the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is", "Two Years Before the Mast" details a voyage from Boston to San Francisco to trade goods from the east for cow hides. "Two Years Before the Mast" is a classic depiction of maritime life in the 19th century. Included in this edition is the appendix, "Twenty-Four Years After" written and added by the author in 1869.