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Title details for Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana, Jr. - Available

Two Years Before the Mast

A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea

by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
Kirby Heyborne
Audiobook (Includes supplementary content)
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1 of 1 copy available
Two Years Before the Mast is a book by the American author Richard Henry Dana, Jr., written after a two-year sea voyage starting in 1834 and published in 1840.


While at Harvard College, Dana had an attack of the measles that 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 nonconformist, 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).
He kept a diary throughout the voyage, and, after returning, he wrote a book based on his experiences. Recognized as an American classic, Two Years Before the Mast was published the same year that Dana was admitted to the bar.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    December 31, 2010

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781452620312
      • File size: 471335 KB
      • Duration: 16:21:56

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      In 1834, the author left Harvard to become a common sailor bound from Boston, around Cape Horn, to California. His record of his experiences provides much detail about shipboard life at that time. As is typical of books about sailing ships, the technical vocabulary of the ship's parts and the crew's daily tasks finds little elaboration. However, Dana's descriptions of shipboard life--food, work, and the captain--come in the English spoken in early-nineteenth-century Boston, which gives the story an authenticity that engages readers to this day. Narrator Kirby Heyborne reads in a soft voice some would find effete. For a hardened sailor, it wouldn't fit, but Dana was young, college educated, and new to the sea, so Heyborne's portrayal is spot-on. Many nautical terms aren't pronounced as they're spelled--for example, "forecastle" and "boatswain"--but Heyborne gets them all right. J.A.H. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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