There has not been a book written, professing to give [the] life and experience [of common seamen], by one who has been one of them, and can know what their life really is. A voice from the forecastle has hardly yet been heard (Dana 37-38).
Dana goes to not only to portray in vivid detail the life of the common sailor for the first time, he also showed how that life was in reality far from the romantic, carefree experience the public had earlier believed it to be. He declares that he means to "present the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is---the light and the dark together" (38).
However, it is the "dark" which stands out in the reader's mind, particularly if that reader---in the 1830s or 1990s---picked or picks
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