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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
Richard Henry Dana's seminal work, "Two Years Before the Mast," is an evocative narrative that chronicles his youthful maritime adventures aboard a merchant ship in the early 19th century. Written in a compelling first-person style, Dana's detailed observations reveal the hardships and beauty of life at sea, while also providing a poignant commentary on the social dynamics and labor conditions of sailors. The book holds significant literary context as both a travel narrative and a social critique, resonating with the burgeoning American Romantic ethos that sought to explore the natural world and human experience in depth. Dana, a Harvard-educated lawyer who abandoned his studies for a transformative journey on the California coast, brings his keen intellect and empathetic sensibility to this maritime memoir. His firsthand experience as a sailor informs the rich, vivid prose and profound reflections on freedom, duty, and the human spirit. The author's passionate advocacy for sailors' rights'—stemming from his own grueling experiences'—adds depth to the narrative and enhances its historical resonance. "Two Years Before the Mast" is highly recommended for readers interested in maritime literature, American history, or the universal themes of adventure and self-discovery. Dana's eloquent prose and insightful reflections invite readers on a journey of exploration, making this classic a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the intricacies of life at sea and the demands of the American spirit. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Two Years Before the Mast
Table of Contents
Introduction
Across oceans and along a rugged coast, a young man exchanges the protections of privilege for the rigors of common seamanship, discovering how nature, hierarchy, and commerce together shape the making of character and the price of survival.
Two Years Before the Mast is a nonfiction maritime narrative by Richard Henry Dana Jr., first published in 1840, recounting his service as an ordinary sailor during a two-year voyage in the mid-1830s. The book moves from New England to the South Atlantic, around Cape Horn, and up the Pacific to the coast then known as Alta California, under Mexican rule at the time. Situated at the intersection of travel writing and memoir, it offers a ground-level perspective on seafaring during a period when American merchant shipping linked distant markets and demanded exacting labor from those before the mast.
The premise is disarmingly straightforward: a Harvard student, hindered by eye trouble, leaves his studies to sign on as a deckhand and learn the trade from the lowest rank. What follows is an immersive chronicle of routines, dangers, and the culture of a working ship, captured in a voice that prizes clarity over ornament. The mood is sober and unsentimental, yet attentive to beauty and wonder when they appear. Dana invites the reader into the cadence of watches and weather, offering experience rather than melodrama, and sustained observation rather than the embellished heroics of nautical romance.
Readers encounter a detailed anatomy of labor at sea: hauling lines, furling sails, scraping hides, and enduring cold, fatigue, and exposure under strict discipline. The narrative examines authority and accountability on board, showing how order can be both necessary and harsh, and how solidarity among sailors arises under pressure. Along the California littoral, Dana observes ports, ranchos, and shore life as they appeared before later transformations, attentive to commerce, custom, and landscape. The result is a study of work, power, and environment, where human endurance meets the elements and the demands of trade in a world knit by wind and markets.
Stylistically, the book is marked by plainspoken precision. Dana explains terms, tools, and tasks without pedantry, letting technical detail illuminate experience: the set of a sail, the logic of a watch system, the feel of a deck in a gale. His method is patient accumulation—scene by scene, job by job—to build a trustworthy picture of life before the mast. This aesthetic of exact observation is anchored by a moral focus: to show what ordinary seamen face and how character is tried by routine as much as by crisis. The prose balances documentary steadiness with moments of spare, reflective lyricism.
Published in the United States during the antebellum era, the book offered contemporaries rare access to a working sailor’s viewpoint and to the California coast before the upheavals that would soon follow. Its firsthand perspective made it valuable to readers interested in maritime life and to historians seeking evidence about labor, trade, and society in that period. Dana later became a lawyer and advocate for seamen, and his account helped concentrate public attention on conditions aboard merchant ships. Today, the text stands as both a literary milestone in American nonfiction and a crucial primary source for a world on the cusp of change.
For modern readers, Two Years Before the Mast matters because it asks enduring questions about dignity, duty, and the costs hidden within ordinary commerce. It illuminates how systems of work shape bodies and choices, and how individuals navigate authority where the margin for error is small. The book also offers the sensory breadth of travel writing—storms, calms, coastlines—without sacrificing ethical clarity. Approach it for a measured, deeply human encounter with the sea and with a pivotal coastline; stay for its honest accounting of labor and its invitation to consider whose effort underwrites prosperity, then and now.
Synopsis
Richard Henry Dana Jr., a Harvard student sidelined by eye trouble, chose in 1834 to ship as a common sailor on a Boston brig bound for the California hide trade. Two Years Before the Mast recounts his two-year voyage and shore duty, recorded from the forecastle rather than the cabin. He signs ship’s articles, joins the crew, and submits to the discipline and routines of a merchantman. Framing his narrative as a faithful record, Dana outlines his aim: to depict ordinary seafaring labor, conditions, and customs, and to describe the little-known society of Mexican Alta California encountered during the trade.
Leaving Boston, the ship runs southward into the Atlantic, and Dana learns seamanship from scratch. He adjusts to the watch system, hammock sleeping, coarse rations, and the demands of reefing, furling, splicing, and holystoning. Early seasickness gives way to competence as he and his shipmates face calms, squalls, and the heavy weather of high latitudes. Rounding Cape Horn brings freezing spray, ice on rigging, and exhausting hours aloft in darkness. The narrative details the hierarchy on board, the mates’ authority, the captain’s commands, and the cooperation required to handle canvas safely under shifting winds and sea.
After clearing the Horn, the brig reaches the Pacific coast of Alta California and enters the hide-and-tallow trade. Dana explains the business: collecting, curing, and stacking cattle hides for shipment to New England. He describes anchoring off open roadsteads, lightering cargo through surf, and setting up a shore hide house, notably at San Diego. The crew’s work expands to salting, drying, and carrying hides, while negotiations ashore proceed with rancheros and mission administrators. The narrative offers descriptive accounts of the region’s landscape, climate, and settlements, noting Spanish language, Catholic observances, and horse-centered ranch life that supports the trade.
Ports along the coast form a regular circuit. The ship calls at San Pedro for Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Monterey, and smaller anchorages such as San Juan. At each stop, hides are traded, gathered, and ferried through the surf to the vessel or to beach warehouses. Extended periods ashore at the San Diego hide house place Dana in daily contact with Californio families, vaqueros, and mission Indians employed in ranch work. He records fandangos, horsemanship, and hospitality, alongside the practical difficulties of provisioning, communication, and weather that shape every transaction and dictate when a ship can work safely.
Shipboard discipline and the legal position of sailors receive extended attention. Dana recounts a flogging ordered by the captain, an episode that underscores the limited remedies available to mariners at sea and the breadth of masters’ authority in the period. Without digression, the narrative shows how such punishment affects morale and cohesion, and how mates enforce orders aloft and in the boats. He outlines pay, clothing, and daily routines, and notes the multinational composition of crews, including Hawaiian sailors, while keeping focus on practical seamanship: surf landings, anchor work in exposed roadsteads, and the hazards of night duty.
Season follows season along the coast as hides accumulate. Dana alternates between shipboard duty and extended shore service managing and organizing stacks of hides and tallow. He visits missions and ranchos, observes secularization’s effects on mission communities, and records local customs and trade practices without adopting a partisan stance. When a homeward-bound ship from Boston arrives to load the gathered cargo, he has the opportunity to transfer for the return passage. Farewells to acquaintances on shore, final errands, and the last collections of hides from the coastal circuit mark the close of his California service.
On the homeward voyage, now aboard a different ship, Dana sails again around Cape Horn, this time as an experienced hand. He notes contrasts in management and accommodations, while the essential work remains: steering, lookout, sailhandling, and maintenance under hard weather. The return rounding of the Horn brings gales, sleet, and ice, followed by the trade winds and a faster run north in the Atlantic. The narrative maintains its emphasis on routine duties and cooperation required to work a square-rigged ship safely, interspersed with brief natural observations of birds, sea life, and changing skies.
Landfall in New England leads to discharge, settlement of wages, and a sharp transition from the forecastle to shore. Dana concludes his account with reflections grounded in experience rather than sentiment, summarizing what two years before the mast taught about labor, hierarchy, and risk. He resumes his studies and later appends material on the legal issues raised by the flogging episode, presenting documents and testimony to illustrate the contemporary maritime law. The narrative closes by reminding readers that it aimed to record facts of shipboard life and coastal trade as they were encountered.
Overall, Two Years Before the Mast offers a plain, chronological portrait of a working voyage and of Mexican Alta California on the eve of major political and economic change. Its central purpose is documentary: to make visible the skills, hardships, and organization of common seamen and to describe the coastal hide trade’s routines and settings. By following the sequence from departure to return, the book delivers a sustained, concrete account that preserves details of people, places, and practices that might otherwise be lost, conveying the value and dignity of maritime labor without embellishment.
Historical Context
Two Years Before the Mast is set during Richard Henry Dana Jr.’s 1834–1836 voyage from Boston, Massachusetts, around Cape Horn to Alta California, then a distant, sparsely populated province of independent Mexico. The narrative unfolds in Mexican ports—San Diego, San Pedro (the roadstead for Los Angeles), Santa Barbara, Monterey (the provincial capital), and Yerba Buena (soon to be called San Francisco)—against the seasonal rhythms of the hide-and-tallow trade. The ships are square-rigged merchant vessels, notably the brig Pilgrim and the ship Alert, sailing before steam supplants sail. Dana records a pre–Gold Rush California of ranchos, missions in secular transition, and thinly manned presidios, tied commercially to Boston by a grueling global route.
The 1833 secularization laws in Mexico, implemented in Alta California chiefly under Governor José Figueroa (1833–1835), reallocated mission lands to civil control, accelerating a ranchero economy based on vast cattle herds. Hides and tallow became principal exports, linking Californio elites—families such as the Picos and other grant holders—to foreign merchants. Dana’s account chronicles this transition at ground level: he works in the hide yards of San Diego and San Juan Capistrano, observes fiestas and rodeos, and describes the missions’ declining authority. The book’s detailed depictions of ranch life illuminate how secularization, begun in 1834–1835, reshaped labor, property, and regional commerce along the California littoral.
The California hide trade formed a nineteenth-century transoceanic supply chain connecting Boston tanneries to Mexican ranchos. Merchant houses like Bryant, Sturgis & Co. financed voyages; brigs and ships spent months collecting, curing, and stowing thousands of hides. Dana notes the “Boston houses” and “hide-houses” at La Playa, San Diego, where cargoes were amassed for loading. He sailed on the Pilgrim under Captain Francis A. Thompson and returned on the Alert under Captain Edward H. Faucon, rounding Cape Horn in heavy weather. The headland now called Dana Point reflects his labor at San Juan Capistrano, where crews hurled hides from cliffs to surfboats—an episode emblematic of the perilous, improvisational logistics sustaining this trade.
Maritime labor and discipline in the 1830s were governed by the 1790 federal Seamen’s Act, which bound sailors to shipping articles and permitted harsh shipboard authority, including corporal punishment. Dana documents the flogging of two crewmen aboard the Pilgrim, the infirmary’s inadequacy, and the practical powerlessness of seamen at sea. His narrative became evidence in a broader reform movement: Congress abolished flogging in the U.S. Navy in 1850, and the Shipping Commissioners Act of 1872 introduced oversight of shipping contracts in the merchant service. After his voyage, Dana wrote The Seaman’s Friend (1841), a legal manual that, together with his book, advanced public understanding of maritime law and labor abuses.
Alta California’s volatile politics shadow the narrative. After Governor Figueroa’s death in 1835, short-lived administrations—Mariano Chico (1836) and Nicolás Gutiérrez (1836)—preceded the November 1836 Monterey revolt of Juan Bautista Alvarado, who briefly declared a “Free and Sovereign State of Alta California” before gaining recognition as governor in 1837. Military leaders such as Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo secured the northern frontier. Dana passed through Monterey during this unsettled period, noting garrisons, the customhouse regime, and widespread uncertainty. Although a sailor, not a partisan, he offers firsthand glimpses of how centralist-federalist struggles in Mexico reverberated on the distant Pacific coast and shaped everyday administration of ports and trade.
Indigenous Californians, long subordinated within the mission system, faced profound disruption after secularization. Populations had already been ravaged by disease and forced labor since the late eighteenth century; the 1830s saw many displaced neophytes working as vaqueros, servants, or field hands on ranchos under coercive arrangements. Dana’s stops at Mission San Juan Capistrano and other sites show Indigenous workers tanning hides, provisioning ships, and navigating the bilingual, stratified world of Californio society. His descriptions—wages paid in goods, indebtedness, and uneven legal protections—mirror a wider regional pattern of labor exploitation and cultural dislocation, offering valuable documentary evidence of social relations in Mexican California on the eve of U.S. expansion.
The book also mirrors forces that soon transformed the region: the Mexican–American War (1846–1848), U.S. military occupations at Monterey and elsewhere, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and the Gold Rush beginning with the January 1848 discovery at Sutter’s Mill. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco in 1847; its population leaped from a few hundred to tens of thousands by 1850, when California entered the Union. Dana’s later appendix, based on an 1859–1860 return visit (published in expanded editions), contrasts the hide-trade outposts of the 1830s with bustling Americanized ports, recording changes in law, property, and demography that reframed the landscapes he had first known under Mexican sovereignty.
As social and political critique, Dana’s work exposes intertwined hierarchies at sea and ashore. He indicts the arbitrary violence of shipboard command, the legal vulnerability of seamen without effective remedies, and the economic calculus that treated sailors as expendable. In California, he documents a colonial frontier economy reliant on coerced or dependent labor, unequal justice, and trading practices that favored distant capital over local workers. By juxtaposing disciplined Yankee commerce with Californio patronage networks and Indigenous dispossession, he reveals structural inequities rather than isolated abuses. The book’s concrete names, places, and dates lend credibility to its implicit call for legal reform, humane labor standards, and accountable governance.
Two Years Before the Mast
INTRODUCTION
Biographical Note
Two years before the mast were but an episode in the life of Richard Henry Dana, Jr.[1]; yet the narrative in which he details the experiences of that period is, perhaps, his chief claim to a wide remembrance. His services in other than literary fields occupied the greater part of his life, but they brought him comparatively small recognition and many disappointments. His happiest associations were literary, his pleasantest acquaintanceships those which arose through his fame as the author of one book. The story of his life is one of honest and competent effort, of sincere purpose, of many thwarted hopes. The traditions of his family forced him into a profession for which he was intellectually but not temperamentally fitted: he should have been a scholar, teacher, and author; instead he became a lawyer.
Born in Cambridge, Mass., August 1, 1815, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., came of a line of Colonial ancestors whose legal understanding and patriotic zeal had won them distinction. His father, if possessed of less vigor than his predecessors, was yet a man of culture and ability. He was widely known as poet, critic, and lecturer; and endowed his son with native qualities of intelligence, good breeding, and honesty.
After somewhat varied and troublous school days, young Dana entered Harvard University, where he took high rank in his classes and bid fair to make a reputation as a scholar. But at the beginning of his third year of college a severe attack of measles interrupted his course, and so affected his eyes as to preclude, for a time at least, all idea of study. The state of the family finances was not such as to permit of foreign travel in search of health. Accordingly, prompted by necessity and by a youthful love of adventure, he shipped as a common sailor in the brig, Pilgrim, bound for the California coast. His term of service lasted a trifle over two years—from August, 1834, to September, 1836. The undertaking was one calculated to kill or cure. Fortunately it had the latter effect; and, upon returning to his native place, physically vigorous but intellectually starved, he reentered Harvard and worked with such enthusiasm as to graduate in six months with honor.
Then came the question of his life work. Though intensely religious, he did not feel called to the ministry; business made no appeal; his ancestors had been lawyers; it seemed best that he should follow where they had led. Had conditions been those of to-day, he would naturally have drifted into some field of scholarly research,—political science or history. As it was, he entered law school, which, in 1840, he left to take up the practice of his profession. But Dana had not the tact, the personal magnetism, or the business sagacity to make a brilliant success before the bar. Despite the fact that he had become a master of legal theory, an authority upon international questions, and a counsellor of unimpeachable integrity, his progress was painfully slow and toilsome. Involved with his lack of tact and magnetism there was, too, an admirable quality of sturdy obstinacy that often worked him injury. Though far from sharing the radical ideas of the Abolitionists[2], he was ardent in his anti-slavery ideas and did not hesitate to espouse the unpopular doctrines of the Free-Soil party of 1848, or to labor for the freedom of those Boston negroes, who, under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850[3], were in danger of deportation to the South.
His activity in the latter direction resulted in pecuniary loss, social ostracism and worse; for upon one occasion he was set upon and nearly killed by a pair of thugs. But Dana was not a man to be swerved from his purpose by considerations of policy or of personal safety. He met his problems as they came to him, took the course which he believed to be right and then stuck to it with indomitable tenacity. Yet, curiously enough, with none of the characteristics of the politician, he longed for political preferment. At the hands of the people this came to him in smallest measure only. Though at one time a member of the Massachusetts Legislature, he was defeated as candidate for the lower house of Congress, and in 1876 suffered the bitterest disappointment of his life, when the libellous attacks of enemies prevented the ratification of his nomination as Minister to England.
Previous to this he had served his country as United States District Attorney during the Civil War, a time when the office demanded the highest type of ability and uprightness. That the government appreciated this was shown in 1867 by its choice of Dana as one of its counsel in the prosecution of Jefferson Davis for treason. The position of legal representative before the Halifax tribunal of 1877, which met to discuss fishery questions at issue between the United States and Canada, was given him no doubt in part because of his eminent fitness, in part as balm for the wound of the preceding year.
But whatever satisfaction he may have found in such honors as time and ripening years brought to him, his chief joy and relaxation lay in travel. When worry and overwork began to tell upon him, he would betake himself to shore or mountains. Upon several occasions he visited Europe, and in 1859 made a tour of the world. At length, in 1876, he gave up active life and took residence abroad, with the idea of finding leisure for the preparation of a treatise on international law. He was still engaged in collecting his material when, on January 6, 1882, death overtook him. He was buried in Rome in the Protestant Cemetery, whose cypresses cast their long shadows over the graves of many distinguished foreigners who have sought a last refuge of health and peace under the skies of Italy.
Such a career as his would seem far enough from being a failure. Yet, in retirement, Dana looked back upon it not without regret. As a lawyer, he had felt a justifiable desire to see his labors crowned by his elevation to the bench; as an active participant in public affairs, he had felt that his services and talents rendered him deserving of a seat in Congress. Lacking these things, he might have hoped that the practice of his profession would yield him a fortune. Here again he was disappointed. In seeking the fulfillment of his ambitions, he was always on the high road to success; he never quite arrived.
It is remarkable that, having written one successful book, Dana did not seek further reward as a man of letters. Two Years before the Mast appeared in 1840, while its author was still a law student. Though at the time it created no great stir in the United States, it was most favorably received in England, where it paved the way for many pleasant and valuable acquaintanceships. The following year, Dana produced a small volume on seamanship, entitled The Seaman's Friend. This, and a short account of a trip to Cuba in 1859, constitute the sole additions to his early venture. He was a copious letter-writer and kept full journals of his various travels; but he never elaborated them for publication. Yet, long before his death, he had seen the narrative of his sailor days recognized as an American classic. Time has not diminished its reputation. We read it to-day not merely for its simple, unpretentious style; but for its clear picture of sea life previous to the era of steam navigation, and for its graphic description of conditions in California before visions of gold sent the long lines of "prairie schooners[4]" drifting across the plains to unfold the hidden destiny of the West.
California and her Missions
It is not easy to realize that, during the stirring days when the eastern coast-line of North America was experiencing the ferment of revolution, the Pacific seaboard was almost totally unexplored, its population largely a savage one. But Spain, long established in Mexico, was slowly pushing northward along the California coast. Her emissaries were the Franciscan friars; her method the founding of Indian missions round which, in due course, should arise towns intended to afford harbor for Spanish ships and to serve as outposts against the steady encroachments of Russia, who, from Alaska, was reaching out toward San Francisco Bay.
Thus began the white settlement of California. San Diego Mission was founded in 1769; San Carlos, at Monterey, in 1770; San Francisco, in 1776; Santa Barbara, in 1786. For the general guardianship of these missions a garrison, or presidio, was in each case provided. It was responsible not only for the protection of the town thus created, but for all the missions in the district. The presidio of San Diego, for example, was in charge of the missions of San Diego, San Gabriel, San Juan Capistrano, and San Luis Rey. So, likewise, there were garrisons with extensive jurisdiction at Santa Barbara, Monterey, and San Francisco.
The Indians in the immediate vicinity of a mission were attached thereto by a sort of gentle enslavement. They were provided special quarters, were carefully looked after by the priests, their religious education fostered, and their innate laziness conquered by specific requirements of labor in agriculture, cattle raising, and simple handicrafts. It was an arrangement which worked well for both parties concerned. The slavery of the Indians was not unlike the obligation of children to their parents; they were comfortable, well behaved, and for the most part contented with the rule of the friars, who, on their side, began to accumulate considerable wealth from the well-directed efforts of their charges.
The supposition was that in the course of years the Indians might become so habituated to thrift and industry as to be released from supervision and safely left to their own devices. But that happy consummation had not occurred when, in 1826, Mexico succeeded in separating herself from the mother country and began her career as an independent republic, of which California was a part. Nevertheless, the greed of politicians suddenly wrought the change which was to have come as the slow development of years. By governmental decree, the Indians were declared free of obligation to the friars; the latter were stripped of their temporal powers, their funds seized under the guise of a loan, and their establishments often subjected to what was little short of pillage. This state of affairs had scarcely begun at the time of the author's visit to California; still, as he points out in Chapter XXI, the decline of the missions had already set in.
The final blow to their power and usefulness came, however, with the upheaval accompanying the Mexican war and the acquisition of California by the United States. Although this country returned all mission buildings to the control of the Church, their reason for being had vanished; they were sold, or destroyed, or feebly maintained on funds insufficient to forestall dilapidation. Fortunately the Franciscan friars had built for beauty as well as for use; the architecture which they devised in skillful adaptation of their native Spanish type displayed originality and picturesque charm. Hence, of late years, Californians have come to feel a worthy pride in the monuments of the early history of their state, and have taken steps to preserve such of them as survive. No less than twenty-one are today the goal of the traveller.
The reader who is interested in pursuing the subject thus outlined will find its satisfactory treatment in George Wharton James's In and out of the old Missions of California, a book that combines agreeable reading with excellent illustrations.
Bibliographical References
The author's life is fully and sympathetically treated in Charles Francis Adams's Richard Henry Dana. Boston, 1890.
The most exhaustive history of California and the Pacific coast in general is H. H. Bancroft's History of the Pacific States of North America. San Francisco, 1882-1888. A briefer work is Josiah Royce's California. Boston, 1886. Though this book considers mainly the transition period, 1846-1856, its introduction gives an excellent survey of earlier years. F. J. Turner's Rise of the New West, which is volume XIV of the American Nation, New York, 1907, tells the story of the development of the whole territory west of the Mississippi.
Those who are curious to search out all the items of ship construction will find them adequately illustrated, under the caption, "ship," in both Standard and Century dictionaries.
Explanation of Diagram
The following diagram, from which many details have been omitted, presents sufficient data for an understanding of the more important nautical terms which occur in the text. A number of other such terms have been explained in the notes. In omitting reference to many more, the editor has felt that ovarannotation would turn a straightforward and interesting narrative into a mere excuse for a nautical dictionary, and quite defeat the purpose of the book. The author's technical vocabulary, even when most bewildering, serves to give force and the vividness of local color to his descriptions. To pause in the midst of a storm at sea for comment and definition would result merely in checking the movement of the story and putting a damper upon the imagination.
Two Years before the Mast affords the teacher a somewhat unusual opportunity. Few literary works are better calculated to stimulate inquiry into the remarkable changes which three-quarters of a century have wrought in the United States. Much profitable class employment in the drawing of maps and the writing of brief themes dealing with various phases of the romantic history of California will suggest itself. The numerous geographical allusions should be traced with the aid of an atlas.
[Editor: Many more numbered lifts, stays, and braces were left out of these simplified diagrams. They are intended to be viewed using a fixed-width font.]
Each mast section is joined to the lower one in two places:
Each mast also sports net-like rigging from the lowest trestletree to the deck. These are called "shrouds".
TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST
PREFACE
I am unwilling to present this narrative to the public without a few words in explanation of my reasons for publishing it. Since Mr. Cooper's Pilot and Red Rover, there have been so many stories of sea-life written, that I should really think it unjustifiable in me to add one to the number without being able to give reasons in some measure warranting me in so doing.
With the single exception, as I am quite confident, of Mr. Ames's entertaining, but hasty and desultory work, called "Mariner's Sketches," all the books professing to give life at sea have been written by persons who have gained their experience as naval officers, or passengers, and of these, there are very few which are intended to be taken as narratives of facts.
Now, in the first place, the whole course of life, and daily duties, the discipline, habits and customs of a man-of-war are very different from those of the merchant service; and in the next place, however entertaining and well written these books may be, and however accurately they may give sea-life as it appears to their authors, it must still be plain to every one that a naval officer, who goes to sea as a gentleman, "with his gloves on," (as the phrase is,) and who associated only with his fellow-officers, and hardly speaks to a sailor except through a boatswain's mate, must take a very different view of the whole matter from that which would be taken by a common sailor.
Besides the interest which every one must feel in exhibitions of life in those forms in which he himself has never experienced it; there has been, of late years, a great deal of attention directed toward common seamen, and a strong sympathy awakened in their behalf. Yet I believe that, with the single exception which I have mentioned, there has not been a book written, professing to give their life and experiences, by one who has been of them, and can know what their life really is. A voice from the forecastle has hardly yet been heard.
In the following pages I design to give an accurate and authentic narrative of a little more than two years spent as a common sailor, before the mast, in the American merchant service. It is written out from a journal which I kept at the time, and from notes which I made of most of the events as they happened; and in it I have adhered closely to fact in every particular, and endeavored to give each thing its true character. In so doing, I have been obliged occasionally to use strong and coarse expressions, and in some instances to give scenes which may be painful to nice feelings; but I have very carefully avoided doing so, whenever I have not felt them essential to giving the true character of a scene. My design is, and it is this which has induced me to publish the book, to present the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is,—the light and the dark together.
There may be in some parts a good deal that is unintelligible to the general reader; but I have found from my own experience, and from what I have heard from others, that plain matters of fact in relation to customs and habits of life new to us, and descriptions of life under new aspects, act upon the inexperienced through the imagination, so that we are hardly aware of our want of technical knowledge. Thousands read the escape of the American frigate through the British channel, and the chase and wreck of the Bristol trader in the Red Rover, and follow the minute nautical manoeuvres with breathless interest, who do not know the name of a rope in the ship; and perhaps with none the less admiration and enthusiasm for their want of acquaintance with the professional detail.
In preparing this narrative I have carefully avoided incorporating into it any impressions but those made upon me by the events as they occurred, leaving to my concluding chapter, to which I shall respectfully call the reader's attention, those views which have been suggested to me by subsequent reflection.
These reasons, and the advice of a few friends, have led me to give this narrative to the press. If it shall interest the general reader, and call more attention to the welfare of seamen, or give any information as to their real condition, which may serve to raise them in the rank of beings, and to promote in any measure their religious and moral improvement, and diminish the hardships of their daily life, the end of its publication will be answered.
R.H.D., Jr. Boston, July, 1840.
CHAPTER I
DEPARTURE
The fourteenth of August was the day fixed upon for the sailing of the brig Pilgrim on her voyage from Boston round Cape Horn to the western coast of North America. As she was to get under weigh early in the afternoon, I made my appearance on board at twelve o'clock, in full sea-rig, and with my chest, containing an outfit for a two or three year voyage, which I had undertaken from a determination to cure, if possible, by an entire change of life, and by a long absence from books and study, a weakness of the eyes, which had obliged me to give up my pursuits, and which no medical aid seemed likely to cure.
The change from the tight dress coat, silk cap, and kid gloves of an undergraduate at Cambridge, to the loose duck trowsers, checked shirt and tarpaulin hat of a sailor, though somewhat of a transformation, was soon made, and I supposed that I should pass very well for a jack tar. But it is impossible to deceive the practised eye in these matters; and while I supposed myself to be looking as salt as Neptune himself, I was, no doubt, known for a landsman by every one on board as soon as I hove in sight. A sailor has a peculiar cut to his clothes, and a way of wearing them which a green hand can never get. The trowsers, tight round the hips, and thence hanging long and loose round the feet, a superabundance of checked shirt, a low-crowned, well varnished black hat, worn on the back of the head, with half a fathom of black ribbon hanging over the left eye, and a peculiar tie to the black silk neckerchief, with sundry other minutiae, are signs, the want of which betray the beginner at once. Beside the points in my dress which were out of the way, doubtless my complexion and hands were enough to distinguish me from the regular salt, who, with a sun-burnt cheek, wide step, and rolling gait, swings his bronzed and toughened hands athwart-ships, half open, as though just ready to grasp a rope.
"With all my imperfections on my head," I joined the crew, and we hauled out into the stream, and came to anchor for the night. The next day we were employed in preparations for sea, reeving studding-sail gear, crossing royal yards, putting on chafing gear, and taking on board our powder. On the following night, I stood my first watch. I remained awake nearly all the first part of the night from fear that I might not hear when I was called; and when I went on deck, so great were my ideas of the importance of my trust, that I walked regularly fore and aft the whole length of the vessel, looking out over the bows and taffrail at each turn, and was not a little surprised at the coolness of the old salt whom I called to take my place, in stowing himself snugly away under the long boat, for a nap. That was sufficient lookout, he thought, for a fine night, at anchor in a safe harbor.
The next morning was Saturday, and a breeze having sprung up from the southward, we took a pilot on board, hove up our anchor, and began beating down the bay. I took leave of those of my friends who came to see me off, and had barely opportunity to take a last look at the city, and well-known objects, as no time is allowed on board ship for sentiment. As we drew down into the lower harbor, we found the wind ahead in the bay, and were obliged to come to anchor in the roads. We remained there through the day and a part of the night. My watch began at eleven o'clock at night, and I received orders to call the captain if the wind came out from the westward. About midnight the wind became fair, and having called the captain, I was ordered to call all hands. How I accomplished this I do not know, but I am quite sure I did not give the true hoarse, boatswain call of "A-a-ll ha-a-a-nds! up anchor, a-ho-oy!" In a short time every one was in motion, the sails loosed, the yards braced, and we began to heave up the anchor, which was our last hold upon Yankee land. I could take but little part in all these preparations. My little knowledge of a vessel was all at fault. Unintelligible orders were so rapidly given and so immediately executed; there was such a hurrying about, and such an intermingling of strange cries and stranger actions, that I was completely bewildered. There is not so helpless and pitiable an object in the world as a landsman beginning a sailor's life. At length those peculiar, long-drawn sounds, which denote that the crew are heaving the windlass, began, and in a few moments we were under weigh. The noise of the water thrown from the bows began to be heard, the vessel leaned over from the damp night breeze, and rolled with the heavy ground swell, and we had actually begun our long, long journey. This was literally bidding "good night" to my native land.
CHAPTER II
FIRST IMPRESSIONS—"SAIL HO!"
The first day we passed at sea was the Sabbath. As we were just from port, and there was a great deal to be done on board, we were kept at work all day, and at night the watches were set, and everything put into sea order. When we were called aft to be divided into watches, I had a good specimen of the manner of a sea captain. After the division had been made, he gave a short characteristic speech, walking the quarter deck with a cigar in his mouth, and dropping the words out between the puffs.
"Now, my men, we have begun a long voyage. If we get along well together, we shall have a comfortable time;[1q] if we don't, we shall have hell afloat.—All you've got to do is to obey your orders and do your duty like men,—then you'll fare well enough;—if you don't, you'll fare hard enough,—I can tell you. If we pull together, you'll find me a clever fellow; if we don't, you'll find me a bloody rascal.—That's all I've got to say.—Go below, the larboard watch!"
I being in the starboard or second mate's watch, had the opportunity of keeping the first watch at sea. S——, a young man, making, like myself, his first voyage, was in the same watch, and as he was the son of a professional man, and had been in a counting-room in Boston, we found that we had many friends and topics in common. We talked these matters over,—Boston, what our friends were probably doing, our voyage, etc., until he went to take his turn at the look-out, and left me to myself. I had now a fine time for reflection. I felt for the first time the perfect silence of the sea. The officer was walking the quarter deck, where I had no right to go, one or two men were talking on the forecastle, whom I had little inclination to join, so that I was left open to the full impression of everything about me. However much I was affected by the beauty of the sea, the bright stars, and the clouds driven swiftly over them, I could not but remember that I was separating myself from all the social and intellectual enjoyments of life. Yet, strange as it may seem, I did then and afterwards take pleasure in these reflections, hoping by them to prevent my becoming insensible to the value of what I was leaving.
But all my dreams were soon put to flight by an order from the officer to trim the yards, as the wind was getting ahead; and I could plainly see by the looks the sailors occasionally cast to windward, and by the dark clouds that were fast coming up, that we had bad weather to prepare for, and had heard the captain say that he expected to be in the Gulf Stream by twelve o'clock. In a few minutes eight bells were struck, the watch called, and we went below. I now began to feel the first discomforts of a sailor's life. The steerage in which I lived was filled with coils of rigging, spare sails, old junk and ship stores, which had not been stowed away. Moreover, there had been no berths built for us to sleep in, and we were not allowed to drive nails to hang our clothes upon. The sea, too, had risen, the vessel was rolling heavily, and everything was pitched about in grand confusion. There was a complete "hurrah's nest," as the sailors say, "everything on top and nothing at hand." A large hawser had been coiled away upon my chest; my hats, boots, mattress and blankets had all fetched away and gone over to leeward, and were jammed and broken under the boxes and coils of rigging. To crown all, we were allowed no light to find anything with, and I was just beginning to feel strong symptoms of sea-sickness, and that listlessness and inactivity which accompany it. Giving up all attempts to collect my things together, I lay down upon the sails, expecting every moment to hear the cry of "all hands, ahoy," which the approaching storm would soon make necessary. I shortly heard the rain-drops falling on deck, thick and fast, and the watch evidently had their hands full of work, for I could hear the loud and repeated orders of the mate, the trampling of feet, the creaking of blocks, and all the accompaniments of a coming storm. In a few minutes the slide of the hatch was thrown back, which let down the noise and tumult of the deck still louder, the loud cry of "All hands, ahoy! tumble up here and take in sail," saluted our ears, and the hatch was quickly shut again. When I got upon deck, a new scene and a new experience were before me. The little brig was close hauled upon the wind, and lying over, as it then seemed to me, nearly upon her beam ends. The heavy head sea was beating against her bows with the noise and force almost of a sledge-hammer, and flying over the deck, drenching us completely through. The topsail halyards had been let go, and the great sails filling out and backing against the masts with a noise like thunder. The wind was whistling through the rigging, loose ropes flying about; loud and, to me, unintelligible orders constantly given and rapidly executed, and the sailors "singing out" at the ropes in their hoarse and peculiar strains. In addition to all this, I had not got my "sea legs on," was dreadfully sick, with hardly strength enough to hold on to anything, and it was "pitch dark." This was my state when I was ordered aloft, for the first time, to reef topsails.
How I got along, I cannot now remember. I "laid out" on the yards and held on with all my strength. I could not have been of much service, for I remember having been sick several times before I left the topsail yard. Soon all was snug aloft, and we were again allowed to go below. This I did not consider much of a favor, for the confusion of everything below, and that inexpressible sickening smell, caused by the shaking up of the bilge-water in the hold, made the steerage but an indifferent refuge from the cold, wet decks. I had often read of the nautical experiences of others, but I felt as though there could be none worse than mine; for in addition to every other evil, I could not but remember that this was only the first night of a two years' voyage. When we were on deck we were not much better off, for we were continually ordered about by the officer, who said that it was good for us to be in motion. Yet anything was better than the horrible state of things below. I remember very well going to the hatchway and putting my head down, when I was oppressed by nausea, and always being relieved immediately. It was as good as an emetic.
This state of things continued for two days.
Wednesday, Aug. 20th. We had the watch on deck from four till eight, this morning. When we came on deck at four o'clock, we found things much changed for the better. The sea and wind had gone down, and the stars were out bright. I experienced a corresponding change in my feelings; yet continued extremely weak from my sickness. I stood in the waist on the weather side, watching the gradual breaking of the day, and the first streaks of the early light. Much has been said of the sun-rise at sea; but it will not compare with the sun-rise on shore. It wants the accompaniments of the songs of birds, the awakening hum of men, and the glancing of the first beams upon trees, hills, spires, and house-tops, to give it life and spirit. But though the actual rise of the sun at sea is not so beautiful, yet nothing will compare with the early breaking of day upon the wide ocean.
There is something in the first grey streaks stretching along the eastern horizon and throwing an indistinct light upon the face of the deep, which combines with the boundlessness and unknown depth of the sea around you, and gives one a feeling of loneliness, of dread, and of melancholy foreboding, which nothing else in nature can give. This gradually passes away as the light grows brighter, and when the sun comes up, the ordinary monotonous sea day begins.
From such reflections as these, I was aroused by the order from the officer, "Forward there! rig the head-pump!" I found that no time was allowed for day-dreaming, but that we must "turn-to" at the first light. Having called up the "idlers," namely carpenter, cook, steward, etc., and rigged the pump, we commenced washing down the decks. This operation, which is performed every morning at sea, takes nearly two hours; and I had hardly strength enough to get through it. After we had finished, swabbed down, and coiled up the rigging, I sat down on the spars, waiting for seven bells, which was the sign for breakfast. The officer, seeing my lazy posture, ordered me to slush the main-mast, from the royal-mast-head, down. The vessel was then rolling a little, and I had taken no sustenance for three days, so that I felt tempted to tell him that I had rather wait till after breakfast; but I knew that I must "take the bull by the horns," and that if I showed any sign of want of spirit or of backwardness, that I should be ruined at once. So I took my bucket of grease and climbed up to the royal-mast-head. Here the rocking of the vessel, which increases the higher you go from the foot of the mast, which is the fulcrum of the lever, and the smell of the grease, which offended my fastidious senses, upset my stomach again, and I was not a little rejoiced when I got upon the comparative terra firma of the deck. In a few minutes seven bells were struck, the log hove, the watch called, and we went to breakfast. Here I cannot but remember the advice of the cook, a simple-hearted African. "Now," says he, "my lad, you are well cleaned out; you haven't got a drop of your 'long-shore swash aboard of you. You must begin on a new tack,—pitch all your sweetmeats overboard, and turn-to upon good hearty salt beef and sea bread, and I'll promise you, you'll have your ribs well sheathed, and be as hearty as any of 'em, afore you are up to the Horn." This would be good advice to give to passengers, when they speak of the little niceties which they have laid in, in case of sea-sickness.
I cannot describe the change which half a pound of cold salt beef and a biscuit or two produced in me. I was a new being. We had a watch below until noon, so that I had some time to myself; and getting a huge piece of strong, cold, salt beef from the cook, I kept gnawing upon it until twelve o'clock. When we went on deck I felt somewhat like a man, and could begin to learn my sea duty with considerable spirit. At about two o'clock we heard the loud cry of "sail ho!" from aloft, and soon saw two sails to windward, going directly athwart our hawse. This was the first time that I had seen a sail at sea. I thought then, and always have since, that it exceeds every other sight in interest and beauty. They passed to leeward of us, and out of hailing distance; but the captain could read the names on their sterns with the glass. They were the ship Helen Mar, of New York, and the brig Mermaid, of Boston. They were both steering westward, and were bound in for our "dear native land."
Thursday, Aug. 21st. This day the sun rose clear, we had a fine wind, and everything was bright and cheerful. I had now got my sea legs on, and was beginning to enter upon the regular duties of a sea-life. About six bells, that is, three o'clock, P.M., we saw a sail on our larboard bow. I was very anxious, like every new sailor, to speak her. She came down to us, backed her main-top-sail, and the two vessels stood "head on," bowing and curvetting at each other like a couple of war-horses reined in by their riders. It was the first vessel that I had seen near, and I was surprised to find how much she rolled and pitched in so quiet a sea. She lunged her head into the sea, and then, her stern settling gradually down, her huge bows rose up, showing the bright copper, and her stern, and bresthooks dripping, like old Neptune's locks, with the brine. Her decks were filled with passengers who had come up at the cry of "sail ho," and who by their dress and features appeared to be Swiss and French emigrants. She hailed us at first in French, but receiving no answer, she tried us in English. She was the ship La Carolina, from Havre, for New York. We desired her to report the brig Pilgrim, from Boston, for the north-west coast of America, five days out. She then filled away and left us to plough on through our waste of waters. This day ended pleasantly; we had got into regular and comfortable weather, and into that routine of sea-life which is only broken by a storm, a sail, or the sight of land.
CHAPTER III
SHIP'S DUTIES—TROPICS
As we had now a long "spell" of fine weather, without any incident to break the monotony of our lives, there can be no better place to describe the duties, regulations, and customs of an American merchantman, of which ours was a fair specimen.
The captain, in the first place, is lord paramount. He stands no watch, comes and goes when he pleases, and is accountable to no one, and must be obeyed in everything, without a question, even from his chief officer. He has the power to turn his officers off duty, and even to break them and make them do duty as sailors in the forecastle. When there are no passengers and no supercargo, as in our vessel, he has no companion but his own dignity, and no pleasures, unless he differs from most of his kind, but the consciousness of possessing supreme power, and, occasionally, the exercise of it.
The prime minister, the official organ, and the active and superintending officer, is the chief mate. He is first lieutenant, boatswain, sailing-master, and quarter-master. The captain tells him what he wishes to have done, and leaves to him the care of overseeing, of allotting the work, and also the responsibility of its being well done. The mate (as he is always called, par excellence) also keeps the log-book, for which he is responsible to the owners and insurers, and has the charge of the stowage, safe keeping, and delivery of the cargo. He is also, ex-officio, the wit of the crew; for the captain does not condescend to joke with the men, and the second mate no one cares for; so that when "the mate" thinks fit to entertain "the people" with a coarse joke or a little practical wit, every one feels bound to laugh.
The second mate's is proverbially a dog's berth. He is neither officer nor man. The men do not respect him as an officer, and he is obliged to go aloft to reef and furl the topsails, and to put his hands into the tar and slush, with the rest. The crew call him the "sailor's waiter," as he has to furnish them with spun-yarn, marline, and all other stuffs that they need in their work, and has charge of the boatswain's locker, which includes serving-boards, marline-spikes, etc. He is expected by the captain to maintain his dignity and to enforce obedience, and still is kept at a great distance from the mate, and obliged to work with the crew. He is one to whom little is given and of whom much is required. His wages are usually double those of a common sailor, and he eats and sleeps in the cabin; but he is obliged to be on deck nearly all the time, and eats at the second table, that is, makes a meal out of what the captain and chief mate leave.
The steward is the captain's servant, and has charge of the pantry, from which every one, even the mate himself, is excluded. These distinctions usually find him an enemy in the mate, who does not like to have any one on board who is not entirely under his control; the crew do not consider him as one of their number, so he is left to the mercy of the captain.
The cook is the patron of the crew, and those who are in his favor can get their wet mittens and stockings dried, or light their pipes at the galley on the night watch. These two worthies, together with the carpenter and sailmaker, if there be one, stand no watch, but, being employed all day, are allowed to "sleep in" at night, unless all hands are called.
The crew are divided into two divisions, as equally as may be, called the watches. Of these the chief mate commands the larboard, and the second mate the starboard. They divide the time between them, being on and off duty, or, as it is called, on deck and below, every other four hours. If, for instance, the chief mate with the larboard watch have the first night-watch from eight to twelve; at the end of the four hours, the starboard watch is called, and the second mate takes the deck, while the larboard watch and the first mate go below until four in the morning, when they come on deck again and remain until eight; having what is called the morning watch. As they will have been on deck eight hours out of the twelve, while those who had the middle watch—from twelve to four, will only have been up four hours, they have what is called a "forenoon watch below," that is, from eight, A.M., till twelve, M. In a man-of-war, and in some merchantmen, this alteration of watches is kept up throughout the twenty-four hours; but our ship, like most merchantmen, had "all hands" from twelve o'clock till dark, except in bad weather, when we had "watch and watch."
