Two Years Before the Mast
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
Two Years Before the Mast
| Full title | Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea |
|---|---|
| Author | Richard Henry Dana Jr. |
| Published | 1840 |
| Pages | 572 |
| Recommended | Once |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | Richard Henry Dana Jr. left Harvard in 1834, shipped out of Boston as an ordinary sailor, rounded Cape Horn and spent two years in the hide trade on the coast of a still-Mexican California — reporting forecastle life from the inside rather than the quarterdeck. The first widely read American account of pre-Gold Rush California, and an indictment of shipboard flogging. |
Two Years Before the Mast
Where I heard about it
- Dissident Teacher — on A Library to Build Great Americans, a 468-title curriculum published on Substack in December 2025, in the Ages 13-99+ band under Adventure — one of the few first-person narratives in that grouping.
About this edition
“Before the mast” means the forecastle, where the common crew lived. The book fed Dana’s later career as a maritime lawyer. The card tracks the Penguin Classics edition the curator linked, which carries the later authorial notes and the voyage maps.
Connections
- A Library to Build Great Americans — the list this came from.
- Richard Henry Dana Jr. — the author, later a maritime lawyer who defended fugitive slaves and helped found the Free Soil Party in Massachusetts.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.