Two Years Before the Mast

Graduating from Harvard in 1834, Richard Henry Dana, Jr.  enlisted as a common sailor on a voyage around Cape Horn on the brig Pilgrim. He returned to Massachusetts two years later aboard the Alert (which left California sooner than the Pilgrim). He kept a diary throughout his sea adventures, and, after returning home, he penned what has been widely recognized as an American classic, Two Years Before the Mast, first published in 1840, the same year of his admission to the bar.