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Loading... Two Years Before the Mast / Twenty-Four Years After (1840)by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Richard Dana, a young lawyer, takes to sea, bunking fore, among the common sailors plying the Atlantic/Pacific supply route for the industrial belt-trade, stuffing cattle-skins from the Californios into the hold of the Pilgrim. Writes memorably and accurately. ( ) Wow this is an astonishing tale! It gives an excellent description of the 19th century California coast: a sense of open, largely empty rangeland very different from my previous notions (and I had several years of schooling in California). Also good descriptions of commercial shipboard life; I had no idea merchant crews were so small. Also interesting descriptions of ethnic interactions. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher SeriesHarvard Classics (23) Is contained inContains
1909. R.H. Dana took a sea voyage and decided to go as a sailor not as a passenger. The voyage was bound from his home town of Boston to California. His experiences during those two years form the subject of this volume. Later in life he took another voyage around the world and those observations form the postscript of this book. This books value and interest today are even greater than they were when it was written for, while the purely human element remains the same, the account of the routine on board the old sailing ships, the picture of the trading on the coast of California, and the description of that country in the days before the discovery of gold had transformed its civilization, have all acquired a historical importance. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)359Social sciences Public Administration, Military Science Navy; Naval ScienceLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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