Two Years Before The Mast
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket - cloth/board in good condition
Pages: Good
Few accounts of life at sea have ever matched the raw immediacy and narrative power of Two Years Before the Mast, the landmark memoir in which a young Harvard student abandons the lecture hall for the brutal realities of a sailor's life aboard a merchant vessel bound for California. Richard Henry Dana Jr. chronicles his 1834–1836 voyage around Cape Horn with unflinching honesty, documenting the back-breaking labour of hide-drying on the California coast, the capricious cruelty of officers, and the remarkable camaraderie forged among working sailors — men whose stories had never before found a champion in print. A watershed moment in American maritime literature, the work stands as both a vivid primary document of pre-Gold Rush California and a passionate social protest against the abuse of ordinary seamen. Dana's prose is precise yet viscerally alive, blending the observational rigour of a trained legal mind — he would go on to become a celebrated maritime lawyer — with the wide-eyed wonder of a young man encountering the wider world for the first time. Prefaces by later scholars, including the edition note of Constance Condie visible in this edition, have only deepened appreciation for its historical significance, leaving the reader to wonder: how many other untold stories lie buried beneath the waves of history?
Author: Richard Henry Dana
Format: Hardback
Genre: Travel & exploration
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket - cloth/board in good condition
Pages: Good
Few accounts of life at sea have ever matched the raw immediacy and narrative power of Two Years Before the Mast, the landmark memoir in which a young Harvard student abandons the lecture hall for the brutal realities of a sailor's life aboard a merchant vessel bound for California. Richard Henry Dana Jr. chronicles his 1834–1836 voyage around Cape Horn with unflinching honesty, documenting the back-breaking labour of hide-drying on the California coast, the capricious cruelty of officers, and the remarkable camaraderie forged among working sailors — men whose stories had never before found a champion in print. A watershed moment in American maritime literature, the work stands as both a vivid primary document of pre-Gold Rush California and a passionate social protest against the abuse of ordinary seamen. Dana's prose is precise yet viscerally alive, blending the observational rigour of a trained legal mind — he would go on to become a celebrated maritime lawyer — with the wide-eyed wonder of a young man encountering the wider world for the first time. Prefaces by later scholars, including the edition note of Constance Condie visible in this edition, have only deepened appreciation for its historical significance, leaving the reader to wonder: how many other untold stories lie buried beneath the waves of history?