Two Years Before the Mast

Facsimile of an original manuscript page of the book (beginning of chapter VI) in Richard Henry Dana's hand

Dana's father first approached Harper and Brothers, as they were his publishers, though the Danas rejected the original offer for 10 percent in royalties after the first 1,000 sold.[2] The manuscript, originally titled Journal, was rejected by four publishing houses after that offer from Harpers in 1839. Two Years Before the Mast was finally published in September 1840 in two versions,[3] without credit to Dana on the title page.[4] Dana had asked for assistance from the poet William Cullen Bryant, whose poem "Thanatopsis" was praised by Dana's father. Bryant again brought the manuscript to Harper's, hoping they would pay $500 to its author, though they ultimately paid Dana only $250 along with 24 complimentary copies.[5] Though the book sold 10,000 copies during its first year, Dana did not receive any royalties from sales of this edition of the book.[2]

In 1911, Dana's son, Richard Henry Dana III, added an introduction detailing the "subsequent story and fate of the vessels, and of some of the persons with whom the reader is made acquainted."

In 1909 Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot selected Two Years Before the Mast as Volume 23 of the Harvard Classics, a collection of notable literature.[6]

Two Years Before the Mast was "conceived as a protest and written to improve the lot of the common sailor".[7] The literary style provides a concrete description of a seaman's life to serve as a practical guide, and not as an adventure novel.[8] His unpolished, laconic style achieved a literary quality, however, that influenced novelist Herman Melville, according to American essayist Wright Morris.[9] In the following excerpt from Dana's diary, the entry expresses not only chronological information, but how a seaman "apprehends time".[10]

Monday, Nov. 10th. During a part of this day we were hove to, but the rest of the time were driving on, under close-reefed sails, with a heavy sea, a strong gale, and frequent squalls of hail and snow.

Tuesday, Nov. 11th. The same.

Wednesday. The same.

Thursday. The same.

This following passage, describing Dana's first sighting of an iceberg off Cape Horn, "reminds us of Melville" and "other passages seem to anticipate him". (Melville, born in 1819, was exactly four years Dana's junior, and returned from his first tour as a seaman when Two Years Before the Mast was first published in 1840):[11]

And there lay, floating in the ocean, several miles off, an immense, irregular mass, its top and points covered with snow, and its centre of a deep indigo color.... As far as the eye could reach, the sea in every direction was of a deep blue color, the waves running high and fresh, and sparkling in the light, and in the midst lay this immense mountain-island, its cavities and valleys thrown into deep shade, and its points and pinnacles glittering in the sun....But no description can give any idea of the strangeness, splendor, and, really, the sublimity, of the sight. Its great size... its slow motion, as its base rose and sank in the water, and its high points nodded against the clouds; the dashing of the waves upon it, which, breaking high with foam, lined its base with a white crust; and the thundering sound of the cracking of the mass, and the breaking and tumbling down of huge pieces; together with its nearness and approach, which added a slight element of fear,—all combined to give to it the character of true sublimity.

The following description of the English sailor, Bill Jackson, has literary similarities to Melville's Billy Budd:[12]

He was tall; but you only perceived it when he was standing by the side of others, for the great breadth of his shoulders and chest made him appear but little above the middle height. His chest was as deep as it was wide; his arm like that of Hercules; and his hand "the fist of a tar—every hair a rope-yarn." With all this he had one of the pleasantest smiles I ever saw. His cheeks were of a handsome brown; his teeth brilliantly white; and his hair, of a raven black, waved in loose curls all over his head, and fine, open forehead; and his eyes he might have sold to a duchess at the price of diamonds, for their brilliancy...Take him with his well-varnished black tarpaulin stuck upon the back of his head; his long locks coming down almost into his eyes; his white duck trousers and shirt; blue jacket; and black kerchief, tied loosely round his neck; and he was a fine specimen of manly beauty... His strength must have been great, and he had the sight of a vulture. It is strange that one should be so minute in the description of an unknown, outcast sailor, whom one may never see again, and whom no one may care to hear about; but so it is. Some people we see under no remarkable circumstances, but whom, for some reason or other, we never forget. He called himself Bill Jackson... .

Writes Morris, "Dana is something more of a poet than either he or his contemporaries were aware; and that his ignorance of this gift was a loss to him as well as to us."[13]

A film adaptation was released in 1946.

The story was adapted into comic book form by Classics Illustrated in 1941 and 1947.[14][15]

In Chapter 7 of his Is Shakespeare Dead?, Mark Twain contrasts passages from Dana's book with a passage from The Tempest to demonstrate Shakespeare's lack of seafaring knowledge, which is then further contrasted with Shakespeare's correct usage of legal terminology.

• Ocean Institute – owned a replica of the brig Pilgrim until it sank and was demolished in 2020
• History of California through 1899
• Casa De San Pedro Hide House

• Two Years Before the Mast at Standard Ebooks
• Two Years Before the Mast at Project Gutenberg
• Two Years Before the Mast public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• Annual public reading of Two Years Before the Mast – during the annual Dana Point Tall Ships Festival