Two Years Before the Mast

In 1834, Richard Henry Dana, a Harvard student whose eyesight had been weakened by measles, left his studies and signed on as a common sailor on the brig Pilgrim, bound around Cape Horn for California, then a remote province of Mexico. He describes the hard, dangerous life of the forecastle, storms and icebergs off the Horn, a cruel captain who flogs two of the crew, and months spent collecting and curing cattle hides along the Californian coast, before he returns home on the ship Alert.

Published in 1840, the book was a great success and gave a true picture of the sailor's life; Dana became a lawyer who defended sailors and escaped slaves, and Melville admired the book. Read Melville's Moby-Dick and Typee.