Two years before the mast : personal narrative of life at sea / by Richard Henry Dana ; with an introduction by Sir Wilfred Grenfell.
TITLE:
Two years before the mast : personal narrative of life at sea / by Richard Henry Dana ; with an introduction by Sir Wilfred Grenfell.
Publication Date:
1980
Publication Information:
New York : Macmillan,
Physical Description:
415 p. : ill.
Additional Contributors:
Summary:
In 1834, nineteen-year-old Richard Henry Dana left Harvard University to enlist as a deckhand on a brig sailing from Boston to the California coast. For the next two years, he recorded the terrifying storms, awe-inspiring beauty, and dreadful hardships of the journey in a diary he would later expand into this riveting memoir of “the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is.” Dana spares no detail in portraying the wretched conditions he endured and the cruelty of the ship’s captain, but he also paints vivid, unforgettable pictures of natural wonders such as icebergs and schools of migrating whales. His descriptions of the missions and presidios of pre–Gold Rush California captured the imagination of the country when the book was first published in 1840, and they serve as valuable historical documentation to this day.
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780333307854
