About book Two Years Before The Mast: A Sailor's Life At Sea (2005)
In a way, the best thing for a writer is misfortune. In that regard, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. got lucky.A young Harvard man, he signed on as a common seaman aboard the brig Pilgrim, bound for California from Boston, to help improve his health. Had it been smooth sailing over benign seas under a wise and beneficent captain, with good food and a leisurely stay on California beaches, we likely would never have heard of Dana.But, thanks to the treacherous and icy waters of Cape Horn, a power hungry captain keen on flogging his men on slight pretence, a year of hard labor hauling hides in anarchic California (still part of Mexico in 1834, the year Dana sailed), and shipboard living conditions that today's Supreme Court would find cruel and unusual, Dana and his work have remained icons in American literature and history. (To wit, re living conditions: When he and his shipmates mistakenly believe war has broken out with France and they might be captured and spend time in a French prison, they view the prospect as a pleasant break from their hard routines and shipboard incarceration.)Part of the lasting success of this book lies in its rich complexity: part memoir of a privileged youth's right of passage into full manhood; part sociological treatise on the people and politics of Mexico; part polemic and muckraking journalism exposing the indignities, injustices and virtual slavery suffered by merchant sailors; part technical manual on sailing; part travel narrative; and part detailed history of commerce on the high seas circa 1835.For example:-We learn much about mizenmasts, marlinespikes, and the how-to of sailing a brig (more, perhaps, than a landlubber cares to know).-We see a California without streets or, for that matter, firm laws, but with a rigid Mexican social hierarchy of criollos, mestizos, and Indians--the last often literal slaves--as well as a smattering of Yankees, Hawaiian sailors, drunks, deadbeats, murderers, and rogues.-We are given the particulars of a booming hide trade--the tanning, hauling, and loading in which Dana is forced to participate.-We glimpse the endless work of the common seaman and the absolute power of ship captains, which, in the case of the Pilgrim's skipper, culminates in a mean-spirited tyranny.-We share a perilous winter passage around Cape Horn and the Straits of Magellan, through great, iceberg-littered fog banks, driving rain and snow, and mean seas, where the perpetually sodden and frigid seamen must negotiate pitching iced decks and rigging to perform their never-ending, life-threatening tasks.-We view avarice, duplicity, ignorance, and cruelty, albeit leavened by loyalty, generosity, friendship, and perseverance. In that way, and more, Dana's tale is a microcosm of the human condition: a seemingly endless and at times pointless journey on a small ark afloat in perilous seas, filled with ceaseless toil yet anointed with sublime natural beauty.Dana's descriptions of the seas, skies, and landscapes often turn poetic. In fact, most all the language of Two Years Before the Mast tends toward the formal and writerly. For despite it being a journal of a common seaman, Dana is an uncommon jack-tar, with a Harvard education, bourgeois manners, and Boston connections that keep him, just barely, from spending another two years in California hauling hides. (Some of his not-so-well-connected mates, from whom he always keeps a distance, at least in his mind and in his journal, were not so lucky.)The reader never forgets Dana's Boston background, as he spouts Latin and quotes English poets. Although this book was the first to give us a seaman's, not the captain's, point of view, the language is not that of a seaman, and it will be another 45 years before Huck Finn comes to free us all from formal Boston English.Though nominally an American, Dana exhibits a tone, demeanor and delicacy more English than Yank. (A possible influence: his lawyer father, who argued for an American monarchy and a House of Lords.) This delicacy also leads Dana to omit from his narrative most anything that might cast him in a common light--such as his consorting with Indian prostitutes in California.But Dana's great fortune as a writer was, seemingly, his misfortune as a gentleman. Upon returning to Boston, he graduated first in his class at Harvard, became a celebrity with the publication of Two Years Before the Mast in 1840, married, and became a prosperous Boston lawyer. However, he never seemed to settle into a life of propriety, as if inoculated against it on his rough and formative two-year voyage. This unresolved inner conflict apparently resulted in a series of nervous breakdowns, which he cured with long sea voyages.Yet we sense this conflict between his upper-crust snobbery and his genuine affection for the rigorous life and his vigorous shipmates seething beneath the surface throughout his journal. We see a young man made over by his experience--a patrician who, in his heart, becomes a common sailor, but one who never comes to relinquish his previous social status and persona.For most memoirs to succeed, the reader must be convinced that the author has set off on a sincere sojourn of personal discovery, to find his or her true self. Here, in Two Years Before the Mast, we see that discovery take place before our eyes, even if the author never fully admits it.
This book didn't give me the thrill I was hoping for; it's not exactly The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea. Just as much time is spent on land as at sea, engaged in the hides trade, visiting with Spanish and Indian locals, riding horses, attending wedding fandangoes. Dana's writing is missing some vital spark. There is also so much sailing and ship-equipment terminology that entire paragraphs would go by where I had to guess what was going on, since the language didn't really help me. The nice sectional drawings of the hulls of the Pilgrim and Alert were helpful, showing the cabin, steerage, 'tween-decks, and forecastle.A few things struck me. 1) Most of the sailors sewed their own clothes for the return voyage, including tarpaulins and hats. The edition I read contained a photo of Dana's white duck sailor suit. Martha Stewart would be proud. 2) Who knew that it took 10-12 men six weeks to load 40,000 hides on board? The sheer amount of time (two years) and labor involved in getting the hides back to the east coast is astonishing. 3) On the return trip the men are so starved for fruits and vegetables that after stopping to procure some onions and potatoes from a passing ship, they eat the raw onions like apples (and nothing ever tasted so delicious). 4) Dana and his fellow sailor-friend Benjamin Stimson (who I gather is an ancestor of the statesman Henry L. Stimson?) are slumming. They're Harvard boys among mostly uneducated sailors. Dana's classmates included James Russell Lowell and Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Dana would eventually graduate at the head of his class. My edition contained a photo of the Dana residence in Harvard Yard, and it's very impressive - large, white, elegant. Later William James and the Harvard President, Conant, would live there. Yet Dana befriends a fellow sailor, uneducated but brilliant, who bests him in their arguments about the Corn Laws and other topics. 5) I'm in awe of how insanely clean sailing ships were kept. I want a 19th century sailor to clean my house for me every week.I was more interested in the crew's encounters with historical context than in the seafaring itself. The ship is completely disconnected from news of the outside world; when they do get letters from home, they're already six months old. So when in 1836 Dana gets his hands on some newspapers from "the city of Mexico," he is bewildered to see Taney (Roger B.) referred to as "Justicia Mayor de los Estados Unidos." What had become of Marshall (John), he wondered. "Was he dead, or banished?" (Dead.) Then, in September 1836, they encounter the brig Solon near Bermuda and ask its men who is President. They respond, "Andrew Jackson." But "thinking the old general could not have been elected a third time, we hailed again, and they answered, Jack Downing, and left us to correct the mistake at our leisure." Must be an inside joke...
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An amazing glimpse into 1800s, this is the autobiographical account of two years in the life of Richard Henry Dana from 1834 to 1836.Leaving America he sails on the Pilgrim and its voyage heads from Boston to South America and around Cape Horn to California where he spends a season in San Diego preparing hides. He then boards the Alert for the return journey as the Pilgrim was not due to return for another 12 months.The book is written in the language of the day at at times can be quite formal compared to the writing of today, that being said, it isn't at all a difficult book to read.The descriptions of life at sea, corporal punishment, 1830s California, people and circumstances are all an interesting window into the past making it worth reading even if one is not particularly interested in sailing itself. An enjoyable non fiction read.
—Henri Moreaux
I consider my experience of having read this book to be my secret treasure. I can't explain to you what was so wonderful about it, nor can I expect that you will have a similar experience. I know of many people who have found this book stultifyingly dull and may more who have not been able to finish it. I am giving this otherwise 4-star book 5 stars based on its being unlike any other book I have encountered.I read this a few years ago and was just reminded of it by a sailing metaphor in the book I'm currently reading. The world described is so alien, and yet so familiar, to me as well as to the author. Separated by choice from whatever comforts, society, and pursuits he would normally encounter, the author describes days of repetitive work, relationships with his fellow sailors, social meetings with the locals, and commerce that are all familiar, daily things to most of us, and yet, there is the other story, that of learning a trade unrelated to previous experience, the deadly dangers of open ocean sailing, and the alienness of both the Spanish inhabitants of California and the Hawaiian natives who are hired to pilot the small vessels.There is some controversy, as I understand it, over whether this is a completely true account of Dana's experiences. It would be a sad thing to me if it were not, but it doesn't diminish my reading experience. As an aside, I read somewhere that this is the first English account of Spanish California. It is, of course, not flattering, but if one makes allowances for natural dislike of the Spanish and distrust of Roman Catholicism, it is very interesting.I feel I should mention that I am blindly estimating my read-date for this book, and also that I was somewhat led to read it from it being mentioned in relation to Moby-Dick, which it is nothing like.
—Tobinsfavorite
Somehow I missed this classic growing up. I think I confused it with Conrad & Melville's fiction. After reading a review in an online group I got a copy for myself. The author was a Harvard student from Boston. In 1834 he signed on as a common seaman in hopes that a break from his studies would cure vision problems. The ship went from Boston round Cape Horn to California where they traded goods for hides. The descriptions are vivid & compelling, & the information about ship life chilling. The sailors signed on for a voyage of 18-24 months, a time that is indefinitely extended once they get to CA, & there is no recourse. Any refusal to obey orders constitutes mutiny with its harsh penalties. The captain's word is law. The account of two men unjustly flogged is horrific & hard to read. Nor could the men quit. California was owned by Mexico. They could not leave their employment & go elsewhere or make their way back to the east coast. The author's first person account is riveting; I'm glad I read the review that inspired me to read it myself.
—Michele
