This study will examine the account of the seafaring life of the early 19th century as described in all its tawdry and terrifying detail by Richard Henry Dana, Jr. in Two Years Before The Mast. The argument of the study will be that Dana in this book, for the discerning reader of his time as well as of ours, almost single-handedly destroyed the romantic notions of the sailor's life which had prevailed previously. One critic in the Introduction by Thomas Philbrick explains:
[R]eaders [must] surrender their 'false fancies' of maritime life and . . . realize 'what a dreadful doom is this of the common mariner, trained as he must be to habits which he can never hope to change, and reduced to a degradation which we must hope he has lost sense of. He is a slave of the worst kind, for his toil is a peril. . . . ' Let parents read the book 'before they suffer a child of delicate training, and unformed character to enter this den of horrors' (Dana 19).
Of course, Dana was able to escape this life because of his intelligence and education, and went on to enjoy a professional life beyond the wild dreams of his fellow sailors. In fact, it is precisely because Dana was able to take part in the perilous sailing realm, while remaining an objective observer of that realm, that he was able to write the book and expose these horrors to the world.
Not only is the book an expose of the reality of life on the sea in that era, it can also be fairly seen as a pro-labor work long before the attention of much of the public was drawn to such concerns. As Dana writes in his opening pages, the book is meant to show for the first time the life of the "common sailor" (Dana 38). Dana writes:
With [one] exception, . . . all the books professing to give life at sea have been written by persons who have gained their experience as naval officers, or passengers and of these, there are very few which are intended to be taken as narratives of facts. . . ....