On August 14, 1834, he departed Boston aboard the brig Pilgrim bound for Alta California, at that time still a part of Mexico. But rather than going on a fashionable grand tour of Europe, he decided to enlist as a merchant seaman, despite his high-class birth. In his junior year, he contracted measles, which in his case led to ophthalmia, a condition that affects one’s eyes.įatefully, the worsening vision inspired him to take a sea voyage, as that was thought at the time to help sufferers recover their health and eyesight. N July 1831, Richard Henry Dana enrolled at Harvard, where in his freshman year, his support of a student protest cost him a six-month suspension. To this day, it is one of the most accurate pictures we have of the life of seamen of that time. It was “conceived as a protest and written to improve the lot of the common sailor,” according to American essayist Wright Morris. Two Years Before the Mastis a vivid account of the common sailor’s wretched treatment at sea. Both as a writer and as a lawyer, he was a champion of the downtrodden, from seamen to fugitive slaves. Dana was an American lawyerand politician from Massachusetts and a descendant of an eminent colonial family. is best known as the author of the American classic memoir Two Years Before the Mast, a book that was highly influential in improving the living and working conditions of seamen.
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