TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST....A SAILING NOVEL...A SEA ADVENTURE! 465 Pages In Print! A GREAT READ! A GREAT NOVEL ABOUT CALIFORNIA IN THE EARLY DAYS OF BEING SETTLED.
Sailing to California from Boston around Cape Horn, Two Years Before the Mast is both an adventure and an eloquent account of life at sea in the early nineteenth century. Richard Henry Dana is only nineteen when he escapes the patrician world of Boston and Harvard for the arduous voyage. The result is an astonishing book, filled with vivid descriptions of storms, whales, and the ship's mad captain, terrible hardship and magical beauty, and fascinating historical detail.
In this book, which takes place between 1834 and 1836, Dana gives a vivid account of "the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is". He sails from Boston, around Cape Horn, arriving in California when it was a remote Mexican land, and San Diego, San Pedro, Santa Barbara, and San Francisco were not much more than a few sheds. He gives descriptions of landing at each of the ports up and down the California coast as they existed then. In the book, he makes a tellingly accurate prediction of San Francisco's future. He also describes a society wedding amongst the "Californios."
California His ship was on a voyage to trade goods from the east for cow hides. Interestingly, the bluffs near Mission San Juan Capistrano presented an obstacle to taking the cow hides to the beach for subsequent loading onto the ship. So, Dana, along with others of the Pilgrim's crew, tossed the hides from the bluffs, while spinning them like a frisbee. Some hides got stuck part way down the cliff and Dana was lowered with ropes to retrieve them. Since that day, that point where the bluffs were located, took on Dana's name, and is today the city of Dana Point. Being an educated person on his ship, he learned Spanish and became an interpreter. He befriended a Kanaka (a native of Hawaii), later saving his life when his captain would as soon see him die. He spent a season in San Diego preparing hides for the journey home.
On the return trip around Cape Horn in the middle of the Antarctic winter he describes terrifying storms and incredible beauty, giving vivid descriptions of icebergs, and the scurvy that afflicts members of the crew. In White-Jacket, Herman Melville wrote, "But if you want the best idea of Cape Horn, get my friend Dana's unmatchable Two Years Before the Mast. But you can read, and so you must have read it. His chapters describing Cape Horn must have been written with an icicle."
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