Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea (1840) - Richard Henry Dana Audiobook

Written by Richard Henry Dana
Read by Bernard Mayes
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Release date: March 8, 2005
Duration: 16:31:07

Richard Henry Dana referred to this book as “a voice from the sea.” It is a book which influenced Conrad and Melville, and it has become a maritime classic which has inflicted legions of men with a passion for the sea.

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. (Hence Dana Point was named). Drawing from his journals, Two Years before the Mast gives a vivid and detailed account, shrewdly observed and beautifully described, of a common sailor’s wretched treatment at sea, and of a way of life virtually unknown at that time.

He returned to Massachusetts two years later aboard the Alert (which left California sooner than the Pilgrim).

He kept a diary throughout the voyage, and after returning he wrote a recognized American classic, Two Years Before the Mast, published in 1840, the same year of his admission to the bar. He devoted himself to fighting for the rights of sailors—and slaves—in court. He went on to help form the anti-slavery Free Soil Party, work for the federal government during the Civil War, and serve on the Massachusetts legislature.