Two Years Before The Mast is a wonderful, elegantly written adventure classic that is still enjoyable more than one hundred years after its original publication. This is Richard Henry Dana Jr.'s account of his life as a common seaman aboard the brig the Pilgrim which set out from Boston on August 14, 1835 destined for California by way of the treacherous Cape Horn.

Dana gives an engrossing, detailed account of the workings of the ship, the day-to-day routines of the deck hands, and the brutal shortcomings of inept, tyrannical officers. This "author's addition" includes a chapter written by Dana twenty-four years after his initial voyage where he revisits some of the people, places and vessels that he had encountered on his original journey.