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. Continue reading Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana