

Before Moby-Dick, There Was “Two Years Before the Mast” - dnetesn
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/before-moby-dick-there-was-two-years-before-the-mast-180955766/?utm_source=twitter.com&no-ist

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mauvehaus
I'm a third of the way through this at the moment. It might be of some
interest to the West Coast crowd on HN to read about just how uninhabited
California was at the time. The ship Dana was on, Pilgrim, spent time trading
goods up and down the coast.

Dana went ashore in several places either to land goods or on liberty and the
change between the pictures he paints and the present day is astonishing.

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matthewmcg
Dana was astonished by the change in his own lifetime (which spanned the gold-
rush period). Some editions of the book include "Twenty-Four Years After."
This is an epilogue written after Dana revisited many of the sites featured in
the book. He finds flourishing cities where there were once lone missions and
empty beaches.

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matthewmcg
The Project Gutenberg e-text is here:
[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2055/2055-h/2055-h.htm](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2055/2055-h/2055-h.htm)

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Maultasche
I read this book around 10 years ago. It was a very good read, and the part at
the end of the book where he visits California many years later was quite
interesting.

Not only does Dana describe what California was like in the 1840s (very empty)
and talks about the economy (based off of ranching and cow hides), but he
writes a lot about ships and sailing. He started off the voyage as a Harvard
University student who knew little about sailing, and he learned as he went.

I particularly enjoyed reading about the Hawaiian sailors that were crewing
ships in the area. Hawaii is referred to in the book as the Sandwich Islands.
It took a while before I remembered that the Sandwich Islands was what the
Europeans named the Hawaiian Islands when they were discovered by European
sailors.

The book became a best seller during the Gold Rush, as it was one of very few
books about California available at the time.

I very much recommend it, especially since it's freely available on the
Internet due to the copyright having expired.

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qrendel
There's actually a pop-culture reference to this early on in Assassin's Creed:
Black Flag. One of the characters replies to another that he did "two years
before the mast" during one of the early cut-scenes. I assume they read it
while researching for the game, and decided to reference it as an easter egg.

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dekhn
Great book, but the comparison to Moby Dick makes no sense.

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zafka
Dana mentored Melville

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anon1385
If I remember correctly Two Years Before The Mast is referenced in White
Jacket for its description of rounding the horn

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JorgeGT
It's a very interesting book - starting by the fact that the easiest
commercial route between Boston and California was around Cape Horn!

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cafard
A wonderful book.

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gweinberg
You can download an audio version free from librivox.

