Description

This 1937 edition of Two Years Before the Mast and Twenty-Four Years After was printed as Volume 23 of the Harvard Classics collection (Dr. Eliot’s Five-Foot Shelf of Books) by P.F. Collier & Son Corporation.

Thi is a classic 1840 memoir by Richard Henry Dana Jr. that details his time as a common sailor on a merchant brig. A personal narrative of a two-year merchant marine voyage from Boston around Cape Horn to California and back in the 1830s. The phrase “before the mast” refers to the forecastle quarters of common sailors at the front of the ship. Dana vividly exposed the harsh realities, grueling physical labor, and brutal discipline (such as flogging) faced by ordinary sailors.