Two Years Before the Mast (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Richard Henry Dana

  Dana enjoyed a friendship with the greatest American writer about life at sea, Herman Melville. Melville incorporated several of Dana’s suggestions into his novels, notably White-Jacket (1850) and Moby-Dick (1851), and it appears that Melville borrowed from Two Years Before the Mast throughout his career. In “The Influence of Two Years Before the Mast on Herman Melville,” published in American Literature 31 (1959), Robert F. Lucid compares passages from Dana’s novel to remarkably similar ones in Melville’s Redburn (1849), White-Jacket (which mentions Two Years Before the Mast), and Billy Budd (composed in Melville’s twilight years and published posthumously in 1924), suggesting that Melville looked to Dana’s book for both inspiration and specific details of life at sea. Lucid asserts that in writing his novels of the sea Melville was “working from, if not in, a tradition which Dana established.”

  When it had become clear to Melville that his career was flagging, he turned to Dana for help. Melville had achieved considerable fame with his earliest narratives, Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847), rousing, straightforward accounts of adventures in Polynesia and the South Seas. But beginning with Mardi (1849), he tended toward an eeriness, a pessimism, and a use of symbolism that alienated the reading public. The commercial failure of Mardi motivated Melville to attempt to readjust his style to the interests of the masses, at least to some degree, and he both imitated and sought advice from Dana. Melville’s subsequent books, Redburn, White-Jacket, and Moby-Dick, published in three consecutive years, were self-conscious attempts to save his foundering career, with Dana’s help. White-Jacket in particular was inspired by Dana’s suggestion that Melville write about life aboard a man-of-war, or warship.

  Dana also gave advice that significantly influenced the composition of Moby-Dick, Melville’s masterpiece. Melville wrote to Dana in May 1850, “About the ‘whaling voyage’—I am half way in the work, & am very glad your suggestion so jumps with mine.” Robert Lucid and Howard P. Vincent, author of The Trying-Out of Moby Dick (1949), speculate that Dana’s “suggestion” was that Melville incorporate, in Lucid’s words, “large amounts of factual data on whaling and seamanship to give the narrative a ring of ‘truth’—that quality which Dana and his reviewers prized so highly.” With its incredibly detailed accounts of nearly every facet of whaling, Moby-Dick more than equaled Dana’s descriptive accomplishments. All three of Melville’s “comeback” novels, however, were imbued with a dark philosophical tone that did little to enhance their popular appeal. The books were commercial failures, and Melville died forgotten and penniless in 1891, unappreciated until the “Melville revival” thirty years after his death.

  Dana Point, California

  The ocean promontory Dana called “the most romantic spot in California” is today within the boundaries of an Orange County city bearing the author’s name. Dana Point (population just over 35,000) is situated halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego, 3 miles from San Juan Capistrano. The city of Dana Point, once known as Capistrano Bay, was incorporated in 1989 and is registered as a California Historical Landmark. Its famous 121-acre bluff, now called the Headlands, overlooks the protected beach cove where Dana’s shipmates from the brig Pilgrim once gathered the hides tossed from the cliffs above. A 9-foot statue of young Richard Henry Dana Jr. stands on a small island in the middle of Dana Point Harbor. Dana Point’s city seal depicts Dana looking out to the harbor, where the Pilgrim is anchored.

  For most of the year a full-size replica of the Pilgrim is at anchor in Dana Point Harbor. The vessel may be more accurately described as a re-creation of Dana’s hide-bearing brig, since it was converted from a 1945 three-masted Danish schooner. The present-day Pilgrim is a living classroom, with shipboard programs conducted by the Ocean Institute in Dana Point. Students can board the Pilgrim to take part in the popular Before the Mast Overnight program, designed to give participants a sense of what life aboard was like for a merchant sailor in the 1830s. The historic vessel also sets sail every year as a Dana Point goodwill ambassador, meanwhile giving its volunteer crew members the opportunity to build their tallship sailing skills. The brig returns every September to take part in the annual Toshiba Tallships Festival. The Pilgrim also serves as a theater for public performances; one popular onboard offering is a one-man show called Two Years Before the Mast. Information on the Pilgrim’s programs and schedule can be found at www.ocean-institute.org. The Ocean Institute’s phone number is (949) 496-2274.

  Film

  In 1946 Paramount Pictures released a film version of Two Years Before the Mast, described on the advertising poster as “the most exciting sea saga ever screened!” Director John Farrow’s film has plenty of action, but the screenplay is only loosely based on Dana’s book. Most of the plot is sheer Hollywood invention and includes matinee-adventure trappings of mutiny and murder. The movie stars Alan Ladd as the rich, spoiled Charles Stewart, son of the Pilgrim’s Boston owner. Stewart is knocked out in a bar brawl by one of the Pilgrim’s crew, seized, and dragged aboard to serve as a sailor. Throughout the voyage Stewart challenges authority, and his friend Dana records Stewart’s punishments. The character of Dana, played by Brian Donlevy, chronicles the fierce brutality initiated by Captain Frank Thompson (Howard da Silva) and carried out by first mate Amazeen (William Bendix). Dana also records the scurvy aboard and the crew’s growing protests against the hard work and horrendous conditions. In this 98-minute film, Stewart and the crew of the Pilgrim are pushed to mutiny, and Dana becomes the hero, saving his shipmates from being punished for their insurrection by publishing his tell-all book and defending their actions before a Senate investigation.

  Comments & Questions

  In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as comments contemporaneous with the work, literary criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout the work’s history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Richard Henry Dana Jr.’s Two Years Before the Mast through a variety of points of view and bring about a richer understanding of this enduring work.

  Comments

  BOSTON WEEKLY MAGAZINE

  The seaman’s life has many charms to the mind of an inexperienced youth, whose temper has become troubled by some real or fancied hardship, or who has acquired an inkling for roving and adventure. We have hardly ever seen a volume better fitted to dispel the illusions woven by the excited fancies of such persons than the one before us. There is no apparent intention to represent a sailor’s life as disagreeable, but a simple recital of facts, tallying well with the statements we have often heard personally from mates and masters, showing the irksomeness of the lot of a foremast hand. The work is interspersed with light and shade, though by far the most of the latter.

  —September 26, 1840

  RALPH WALDO EMERSON

  This is a voice from the forecastle. Though a narrative of literal, prosaic truth, it possesses something of the romantic charm of Robinson Crusoe. Few more interesting chapters of the literature of the sea have ever fallen under our notice. The author left the halls of the University for the deck of a merchant vessel, exchanging “the tight dress coat, silk cap, and kid gloves of an undergraduate at Cambridge, for the loose duck trousers, checked shirt, and tarpaulin hat of a sailor,” and here presents us the fruits of his voyage. His book will have a wide circulation; it will be praised in the public prints; we shall be told that it does honor to his head and heart; but we trust that it will do much more than this; that it will open the eyes of many to the condition of the sailor, to the fearful waste of man, by which the luxuries of foreign climes are made to increase the amount of commercial wealth. This simple narrative, stamped with deep sincerity, and often displaying an unstudied, pathetic eloquence, may lead to reflections, which mere argument and sentimental appeals do not call forth. It will serve to hasten the day of reckoning between society and the sailor, which, though
late, will not fail to come.

  —unsigned review in The Dial (October 1840)

  THE KNICKERBOCKER; OR, NEW YORK MONTHLY MAGAZINE

  We find our author ever the same hard-working, all-enduring philosopher, with an eye to see and a heart to feel every body’s discomforts and sufferings but his own. We commend the forcible Saxon English, and the unpretending style, of this work to the notice of the elaborate, ornate class of writers among us, who find it so difficult to describe a plain matter in a plain way.

  —October 1840

  NEW YORK REVIEW

  Truth—plain, honest, unvarnished truth, is the stamp upon every page of this most attractive volume, and gives to it such a charm, that the every-day incidents of sea life, and a common trading voyage up and down the coast of California, which it narrates, excite an interest in the reader, far beyond that of most tales of fiction. It is a picture drawn wholly from nature—from beginning to end, there is not a touch, or a trait, or a color, of the ideal, and this evidently, not because the author wanted imagination, but because he had imposed upon himself the severe law of restraining it, and adhering scrupulously to facts. We never read a book of more singleness of purpose—its professed design of presenting “the life of a common sailor as it really is,” is carried out with the most unvarying fidelity, and at the same time with masterly spirit. The author, had he aimed at effect, might have wrought upon the feelings of his reader at the outset, by an account of his previous position in society, the refinements to which he had been accustomed, and the superior education he had received; but he employs no such artifices; nothing could be more direct and unpretending than the manner in which the story begins—the past is introduced only as far as is requisite to exhibit the transformation he is now undergoing, and the new scene, and new characters, are at once brought on with the vividness of reality. We feel sure that no one can read the first page of this narrative, and lay it aside until it is finished....

  One will hardly read a second page of the narrative without perceiving that the transformation is completely effected in the first twenty-four hours of the young sailor’s life. He has no sentimentality on taking leave of his friends, no palaver about “longing, lingering looks” cast back upon the receding shores; “for such things,” he says, and says truly, “no time is allowed on board ship;” he simply takes a last look at the city, bids “good night” to his native land, and goes about his duty. We scarcely know a more heart sinking moment than the coming on of the first night of darkness of a first voyage before the mast, to a youth accustomed to comforts and kindness at home. The surrounding waste of water, the wretched feeling of seasickness, the harsh tones of the captain and officers, the coarse jokes of the sailors, the disagreeable food, the dark and damp and dirty sleeping room, and above all the division of the crew into watches, which tells him that he can never have at best but four hours oblivion of such a sea of troubles; these are some of the many miseries, which make up the full measure of the suffering....

  It may be difficult to make it appear, that a volume of five hundred pages, entirely filled with nautical details, and the common occurrences of traffic with a rude people, can be interesting and instructive, but such is the fact, and all who read it will be of our opinion. It gives us a juster estimate, than is elsewhere to be found, of the virtues and vices of a class of men, who are commonly represented on the one hand as all generosity and nobleness of feeling, and on the other as depraved and degraded in the extreme. We here see them as they are, a compound of good and evil, like mankind in general, with no other peculiarities than such as naturally result from their habits in life. Their cause and their claims are ably and justly stated, and the author has entitled himself to the warmest thanks of ship owners, ship masters, sailors, and all others concerned in navigation, for the dispassionate and impartial manner in which he has represented the existing grievances in our merchant service, and pointed out their remedies. Most clearly has he shown the absurdity of the common notion, that sailors cannot bear good treatment; and while he pleads most earnestly and feelingly for the exercise of greater humanity towards them, there is not a word in his book encouraging insubordination, or denying the necessity of severe discipline at sea.

  This book deserves especial commendation on another account; it is calculated to exert a most salutary influence upon our youth. There are many among them who, under various circumstances, look to a long voyage as the summit of their wishes; either as a dernier resort, after a career of extravagance and dissipation, or an emancipation from paternal restraint, or an occasion of gratifying a spirit of adventure and a love of romance, or as a relief from the ennui of an idle life, or the disgust of an uncongenial occupation. The account here given of “two years before the mast,” will serve to dissipate all the illusions about the sea, which most young men are wont to cherish; they will learn from it, that the forecastle of a ship is the most undesirable of all asylums, to any one who has had even but a moderate share of comforts at home; and be convinced, that no reasonable man will choose it for his dwelling place, unless he has made up his mind to “follow the sea,” and get upon the weather-side of the quarter deck as soon as possible.

  —October 1840

  ARCTURUS, A JOURNAL OF BOOKS AND OPINION

  There is, to us, something far more alluring in the plainness and simplicity of [Two Years Before the Mast], than in those exaggerated pictures of the sea which pass current with the novel-reading world. In truth, there is more imagination in the full consciousness of reality, in doing simple justice to the characters and events of actual life, than is required in writing a library of the second class works of fiction. To describe a scene of common life accurately there is needed not only a ready observation of what occurs, and the power of description, but a sympathy with the actors; in other words, a force of imagination to place ourselves in the very situation, with the very thoughts of those concerned. The man of imagination is the man who sees most in the world, as well as above it. This is the secret of genius, that it finds more in common things than common men find.

  —December 1840

  CHARLES DICKENS

  Remember that it was an undergraduate of Harvard University who served as a common seaman two years before the mast, and who wrote about the best sea book in the English tongue.

  —from his speech at the Oxford and Harvard Boat Race (August 30, 1869)

  D. H. LAWRENCE

  We must give Dana credit for a profound mystic vision. The best Americans are mystics by instinct. Simple and bare as his narrative is, it is deep with profound emotion and stark comprehension. He sees the last light-loving incarnation of life exposed upon the eternal waters: a speck, solitary upon the verge of the two naked principles, aerial and watery. And his own soul is as the soul of the albatross.

  —from Studies in Classic American Literature (1923)

  Questions

  1. What are the attractions of what Dana did—boarding a ship and just taking off? If you had no obligations or responsibilities and had an opportunity to sail off on a merchant ship, would you be tempted? What is it about the possibility that tempts you?

  2. Do you trust Dana’s observations? What is it in particular—style or tone—that makes him seem trustworthy or untrustworthy?

  3. The life of sailors aboard ship, as Dana presents it, has few pleasures and many pains, few rewards and many deprivations. Considering the conditions of the time, the relative lack of amenities on the ships, and the length of the voyages, what could have been done to improve the lot of the sailors without taking away their essential work?

  4. In works of this sort the sea often becomes symbolic. It seems to embody feelings and moods, spiritual and psychological agencies; it seems to signify the nature of existence or the human condition. Do you see evidence of symbolism in the sea as represented in Two Years Before the Mast?

  For Further Reading

  Editions Published within the Author’s Lifetime

  Two Years Before the Mast
: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea. New York: Harper, 1840. Published four years after Dana’s voyage, the first edition contains the main text along with a “Preface” and a “Concluding Chapter,” which Dana added as afterthoughts to his completed narrative.

  Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea. Boston: Fields, Osgood, 1869. When the Harper copyright reverted to the author in 1868, Dana revised his main text, added many footnotes and revised the “Preface.” Dana also replaced his original “Concluding Chapter” with a reflection of his return trip to California in 1859, titled “Twenty-Four Years After.” This updated 1869 version is known as the Author’s Edition.

  Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea. Boston: J. R. Osgood, 1871. This edition includes minor revisions; it was slightly revised twice more under the author’s direction, in 1872 and 1876, as Dana gained a greater understanding of California geography and social issues. There are also historical updates: See endnote 46.

  Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea. Boston: Houghton, Osgood, 1879. The last authorized edition published in the author’s lifetime, with slight revisions.

  Other Editions of Note

  Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911. Edited by Richard Henry Dana III, this lavish edition of the 1869 text is supplemented by the son’s introduction and biography of his father, information about the crews of the Pilgrim and the Alert, and a “Dictionary of Nautical Terms” gleaned from Dana’s book The Seaman’s Friend. Dana’s son ends with a chapter titled “Seventy-Five Years After,” in which Dana’s son reflects on his own voyage to California and his visits to the locations mentioned in his father’s book. Dana III also describes his meetings with some of the people his father wrote about in the 1869 edition. Includes illustrations, photographs, and a map.