Two Years Before the Mast
Dana, Richard Henry, 1815-1882
English
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Below is a summary of Two Years Before the Mast
Two Years Before the Mast
Richard H. Dana, Jr.
INTRODUCTION
In 1869, my father, the late Richard Henry Dana, Jr., prepared a
new edition of his ``Two Years Before the Mast'' with this
preface:
``After twenty-eight years, the copyright of this book has
reverted to me. In presenting the first `author's edition' to the
public, I have been encouraged to add an account of a visit to the
old scenes, made twenty-four years after, together with notices of
the subsequent story and fate of the vessels, and of some of the
persons with whom the reader is made acquainted.''
The popularity of this book has been so great and continued that
it is now proposed to make an illustrated edition with new
material. I have prepared a concluding chapter to continue my
father's ``Twenty-four Years After.'' This will give all that we
have since learned of the fate of crew and vessels, and a brief
account of Mr. Dana himself and his important lifework, which
appears more fully in his published biography[1] and printed
speeches and letters.[2] This concluding chapter will take the place
of the biographic sketch prefixed to the last authorized edition.
There is also added an appendix with a list of the crews of the
two vessels in which Mr. Dana sailed, extracts from a log, and
also plates of spars, rigging and sails, with names, to aid the
reader.
In the winter of 1879-80 I sailed round Cape Horn in a full-rigged
ship from New York to California. At the latter place I visited
the scenes of ``Two Years Before the Mast.'' At the old town of
San Diego I met Jack Stewart, my father's old shipmate, and as we
were looking at the dreary landscape and the forlorn adobe houses
and talking of California of the thirties, he burst out into an
encomium of the accuracy and fidelity to details of my father's
book. He said, ``I have read it again and again. It all comes back
to me, everything just as it happened. The seamanship is
perfect.'' And then as if to emphasize it all, with the exception
that proves the rule, he detailed one slight case where he thought
my father was at fault,---a detail so slight that I now forget
what it is. In reading the Log kept by the discharged mate,
Amerzeen, on the return trip in the Alert, I find that every
incident there recorded, from running aground at the start at San
Diego Harbor, through the perilous icebergs round the Horn, the
St. Elmo's fire, the scurvy of the crew and the small matters like
the painting of the vessel, to the final sail up Boston Harbor,
confirms my father's record. His former shipmate, the late B. G.
Stimson, a distinguished citizen of Detroit, said the account of
the flogging was far from an exaggeration, and Captain Faucon of
the Alert also during his lifetime frequently confirmed all that
came under his observation. Such truth in the author demands truth
in illustration, and I have cooperated with the publishers in
securing a painting of the Alert under full sail and other
illustrations, both colored and in pen and ink, faithful to the
text in every detail.
Accuracy, however, is not the secret of the success of this book.
Its flowing style, the use of short Anglo-Saxon words,[3] its
picturesqueness, the power of description, the philosophic
arrangement all contribute to it, but chiefly, I believe, the
enthusiasm of the young Dana, his sympathy for his fellows and
interest in new scenes and strange peoples, and with it all, the
real poetry that runs through the whole. As to its poetry, I will
quote from Mrs. Bancroft's ``Letters from England,'' giving the
opinion of the poet Samuel Rogers:
``London, June 20, 1847.
``The 19th, Sat. we breakfasted with Lady Byron and my friend Miss
Murray, at Mr. Rogers'. . . . After breakfast he had been
repeating some lines of poetry which he thought fine, when he
suddenly exclaimed, `But there is a bit of American prose, which,
I think, has more poetry in it, than almost any modern verse.' He
then repeated, I should think, more than a page from Dana's `Two
Years Before the Mast' describing the falling overboard of one of
the crew, and the effect it produced, not only at the moment, but
for some time afterward. I wondered at his memory, which enabled
him to recite so beautifully a long prose passage, so much more
difficult than verse. Several of those present, with whom the book
was a favorite, were so glad to hear from me that it was as true
as interesting, for they had regarded it as partly a work of
imagination.''
In writing the book Mr. Dana had a motive which inspired him to
put into it his very best. The night after the flogging of his two
fellow-sailors off San Pedro, California, Mr. Dana, lying in his
berth, ``vowed that, if God should ever give me the means, I would
do something to redress the grievances and relieve the sufferings
of that class of beings with whom my lot has been so long cast.''
This vow he carried out in no visionary scheme of mutiny or
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