Richard Henry Dana Jr, Two Years Before the Mast *****

I put off reading this sailor's classic for many years because of its reputation -- and self-proclaimed purpose -- as an exposé of the dreadful conditions for common sailors in the 19th century. I expected a grim and indignant tale. But that's not at all what Two Years Before the Mast is like. It is an exceedingly well-written account of the sailing life and of pre-gold-rush California. It may not be an adventure story, but it offers plenty of memorable adventures nonetheless.

I imagine that many readers would find its details about shipboard life and the cattle-hide trade tedious, but for me Dana paints a complete portrait of a way of life. I found surprising insights throughout the book, all the way to the very end where Dana notes that:

The soundings on the American coast are so regular that a navigator knows as well where he has made land, by the soundings, as he would by seeing the land. Black mud is the soundings of Block Island. As you go toward Nantucket, it changes to a dark sand; then, sand and white shells; and on George's Banks, white sand...

Sailing around Cape Horn among the icebergs, carrying hides on his head through the Santa Barbara surf, curing the hides on the beach in San Diego, dodging the boarding-house touts in Boston Harbor, hauling in the weather cross-jack braces -- it's all fascinating.