Two Years Before the Mast

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 atte

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tions, that I was completely bewildered. There is not so helpless and pitiable an object in the world as a landsman beginning a sailor's life (Dana 42). By the end of the book, Dana has evolved into an experienced sailor knowledgeable about the sea and ships in ways he could not have imagined just two years before: A ship is not often injured by lightning, for the electricity is separated by the great number of points she presents, and the quantity of iron which she has scattered in various parts. The electric fluid ran over our anchors, top-sail sheets and ties; yet no harm was done to us. We went below at four o'clock, leaving things in the same state. . . . But a man is no sailor if he cannot sleep when he turns-in, and turns out when he's called, And when, at seven bells, the customary "All the larboard watch, ahoy!" brought us on deck, it was a fine, clear, sunny morning (Dana 439). The development of the author as sailor and as man, and the knowledge, wisdom, compassion and sailor's vocabulary he acquires give the book an authenticity both as a chronicle of the sea and an account of the evolution of a fascinating and sympathetic real-life protagonist. The hardships of the sailors are both natural and man-made. Of the na

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