If you’re curious about what life as a common sailor in the 1800s was like, the McCracken Research Library’s Associate Librarian and Senior Cataloger Eric Rossborough recommends “Two Years Before the Mast” by Richard Henry Dana Jr.
Rossborough said Dana had to take a break from school at Harvard University when he suffered from complications related to the measles. The author decided to enlist as a merchant seaman and joined a crew sailing from Boston around Cape Horn in South America to California.
Rossborough read the book as a kid, and said today it’s largely seen as an adventure tale. But when it was published in 1840, some people looking to move West read it for a different purpose.
“It's really pertinent to our library because it has descriptions of California, and people who were moving to California in the Gold Rush, which started 15 years later, used this book heavily. It was one of the only English sources of information about the state of California at that time,” he said.
Rossborough said that later on, the author wanted to return to the sea, but that wasn’t really an option.
“ He really liked being on the ocean in spite of the employment conditions that he witnessed, and he really wanted to go back to sea. He never did because he came from an upper crust family and they wouldn't countenance him. He had to either go into divinity or the law. Those were his two choices,” he said.
Dana became an attorney focusing on maritime law. His writings about life at sea later inspired author Herman Melville.
The library’s 1964 edition of the book contains a hand written letter from Dana, although the letter itself is largely illegible.
