Richard Henry Dana (1815-1882) of Boston left his studies at Harvard in 1834 in the hope that a sea voyage would aid his failing eyesight. He shipped out of Boston as a common seaman on board the brig Pilgrim bound for the Pacific, and returned to Massachusetts two years later. Completing his education, Dana became a leader of the American bar, an expert on maritime law, and a life-long advocate of the rights of the merchant seamen he had come to know on the Pilgrim and other vessels. Two years before the mast (1911) is based on the diary Dana kept while at sea. First published in 1841, it is one of America's most famous accounts of life at sea. It contains a rare and detailed account of life on the California coast a decade before the Gold Rush revolutionized the region's culture and society. Dana chronicles stops at the ports of Monterey, San Pedro, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Santa Clara. He describes the lives of sailors in the ports and their work of hide-curing on the beaches, and he gives close attention to the daily life of the peoples of California: Hispanic, Native American, and European. The edition of the book reproduced here includes the chapter "Twenty-four Years After" prepared by Dana to accompany the "author's" edition published in 1869 as well as his son's "Seventy-six Years After," an appendix prepared in 1911.

In 1933, a young Canadian woman rejected the expectations of society and her upper-class family and became a crew member aboard one of the last great four-masted sailing vessels that still plied the ocean. It was not an easy task. Young Annette had to fight pressures from her family, rejection from schools of navigation, and doubts from ship owners. When she finally found a berth as an apprentice seaman, she faced hostility from officers and crew, who grumbled that she should be home "raising babies." In the end, however, Annette won their respect, taking in sails, standing night watches, hauling and coiling ropes all the tasks the men were doing, with no concession to a girl’s lesser strength. My Year Before the Mast tells the story of Annette Brock Davis’s life on the sea as the first female crew member of a commercial sailing line. Her courage and determination to break into a closed male world are central to this book, but we cannot ignore the fact that, while this is a book about a woman’s struggle, it is also a book about the sea. Davis brings to life an era long gone, and introduces an incredible cast of characters the crew, officers, and passengers, each with his own foibles, humour, generosity, and flashes of meanness. But through it all, Annette emerges as the most remarkable character of them all.

Embark on an epic journey through the life of sailor Ned Myers in James Fenimore Cooper's captivating biography. Follow Ned's thrilling adventures, from his early days at sea to shipwrecks, smuggling, and imprisonment. Cooper's vivid descriptions paint a vivid picture of life on the high seas during the 1800s, bringing to life the political, economic, and social landscape of the time.

A true story of the battered life of a foremast crewman, Two Years Before the Mast is Richard Henry Dana’s classic travel narrative, which inspired canonical works such as Moby Dick and Sailing Alone Around the World. As Rod Scher follows Dana (the Harvard dropout-turned-sailor) on his voyages around North America, he annotates Dana’s tale with critiques, tie-ins to today, and little-known facts about both the book and the milieu of Dana’s time.