Dana Before the Mast

August 14: On this day in 1834 Richard Dana boarded the merchant brig Pilgrim for the Boston–California return voyage that would become Two Years Before the Mast. Dana had just turned nineteen when he decided to escape Harvard and his comfortable, upper-class life for the high seas, in search of hides and tallow. His 1840 book was an attempt to tell of the ordinary seaman’s life at sea, in “a voice from the forecastle.”