I wouldn’t call it a suspenseful book. And yet Two Years Before the Mast kept me in suspense. I wouldn’t call it a book that’s hard to put down, and yet I read it in great chunks, reluctant to stop.

It’s an old book, and it’s written in the manner of an old book. And yet this reader felt the living presence of an intelligent, brave-hearted and sympathetic narrator at his elbow, one he is glad to have become acquainted with.

In 1834, Richard Henry Dana was a Harvard undergraduate. Stricken with the measles, he recovered with his sight damaged, unable to read much. He chose a radical form of therapy.

…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.

This was no pleasure cruise. “Before the mast” is a nautical term meaning the forecastle area, the place where common seamen bunked, where officers went seldom, and the captain almost never. Life before the mast meant constant labor, little sleep, unvaried food, and much danger. One crew member is lost overboard before the brig “Pilgrim” has rounded Cape Horn.

There is discontent too, culminating in the flogging of two sailors by the captain himself. This was apparently not a common practice in the American merchant service at that point in time, and it appears that young Dana was not the only crewman who had never seen such a thing before.

All in all, the Pilgrim seems to have been unlucky in her captain, though Dana is remarkably moderate in criticizing the man. He puts much blame on the first mate, whose relative slackness in discipline gave the captain an excuse to go forward and meddle in matters with which he would not normally have concerned himself. The man seems to have been a competent sailor, but an awful leader of men, and as Dana learns later in the story, a personal scoundrel.

The voyage is to California, for the sole trade of that Mexican province at the time, cow-hides. The bulk of the voyage is spent going from California port to California port, and Dana’s account is one of our most important historical accounts of that province in those pre-gold rush times.

Finally there’s the voyage home, including a dangerous passage through an antarctic ice field, which Dana describes in memorable, poetic prose.

Finally Dana draws conclusions about ways in which the sailor’s lot may be improved. This section must come as a shock to many modern readers. He considers suggestions for reducing a captain’s authority, or banning flogging, and rejects them as impractical and even dangerous. What he recommends is Christian ministry to sailors, to improve their character and morals.

With the sailor, as with all other men in fact, the cultivation of the intellect, and the spread of what is commonly called useful knowledge, while religious instruction is neglected, is little else than changing an ignorant sinner into an intelligent and powerful one.

My edition contains two supplements, Dana’s later account of a visit to the American state of California 25 years later (big changes have been made), and a summary of the ultimate fates of those of his shipmates of whom he could learn anything.

Two Years Before the Mast is rightfully called an American classic. You’d have to be remarkably well-informed not to learn something, and remarkably cold-hearted not to be moved. I recommend it highly.