Cover of Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea

Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea

Two Years Before the Mastis a book by the American author Richard Henry Dana, Jr. written after a two-year sea voyage starting in 1834.

While at Harvard College, Dana had an attack of the measles, which affected his vision. Thinking it might help his sight, Dana, rather than going on a Grand Tour as most of his fellow classmates traditionally did (and unable to afford it anyway) and being something of a non-conformist, left Harvard to enlist as a common sailor on a voyage around Cape Horn on the brig Pilgrim. He returned to Massachusetts two years later aboard the Alert (which left California sooner than the Pilgrim).

Read more

He kept a diary throughout the voyage, and after returning he wrote a recognized American classic, Two Years Before the Mast, published in 1840, the same year of his admission to the bar.

Subject
historybiographytravelgeography
Genre
adventurehistorical fiction
Themes
nauticalamerican historytravelhistory
Setting
19th centurycaliforniacubaUSAnew england
Audience
adult
Length
medium · 366 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Free onlineFree
    Sailing Alone around the World Shares classics, travel, nonfiction
  2. The Bounty Mutiny Shares classics, nonfiction, history
  3. Gipsy Moth Circles the World Shares sailing, nonfiction, adventure
  4. The Story of My Escape Shares classics, nonfiction, memoir

“People who read Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Kabloona
  2. Everest: The West Ridge
  3. The Journals
  4. The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst

“If you want more of the same (history about nautical), start with these.”

  1. Black Fire: The True Story of the Original Tom Sawyer--and of the Mysterious Fires That Baptized Gold Rush-Era San Francisco
  2. Havana Dreams: A Story of a Cuban Family
  3. Bold Spirit: Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America
  4. Voyage of the Liberdade

“If it was the classics that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. The Road by Jack London, Fiction, Action & Adventure
  2. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
  3. Down and Out in Paris and London
  4. The Diary of Samuel Pepys: A Selection

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Fair Wind and Plenty of It: A Modern-Day Tall-Ship Adventure
  2. Everett
  3. Quest
  4. Seaflower