The Complete Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana

The Complete Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana

The complete, definitive illustrated version of this classic.

Our version has:

• A cover based on the 1911 edition.
• Introduction.
• Maps of his voyage.
• The complete, unabridged text.
• 65 original illustrations by E. Boyd Smith
• Twenty-Four Years After essay by the Author
• Seventy-Six Years After essay by the Author's Son
• Appendix with diagrams of sailing ships and all their sails, lines and masts

Two Years Before the Mast is a memoir by the American author Richard Henry Dana Jr., published in 1840, having been written after a two-year sea voyage from Boston to California on a merchant ship starting in 1834. Dana left Harvard to enlist as a common sailor on a voyage around Cape Horn on the brig Pilgrim. He returned to Massachusetts two years later. He kept a diary throughout the voyage, and, after returning, he wrote this classic. The term before the mast refers to the quarters of the common sailors, in the forecastle, in the front of the ship. This 'complete' version contains maps of his voyages, an introduction, notes written 24 and 76 years after the voyage, and diagrams of sailing ships.

Richard Henry Dana Jr (1815-1882) was a Massachusetts-based lawyer and politician. Dana became well-known as the author of Two Years Before the Mast, a memoir that became an American classic. He was a descendent of a prominent colonial family. Dana was a champion of the oppressed, from mariners to escaped slaves, as a writer and as a lawyer.