Afflicted with poor vision following a bout with the measles, Harvard undergraduate Richard Henry Dana left school in 1834 to ship out as a common sailor aboard the brig Pilgrim for a two-year voyage around Cape Horn to California. He kept a diary during the voyage and upon his return wrote the classic Two Years Before the Mast, which was published in 1840 and quickly became a best seller. The term “before the mast” refers to the quarters of common sailors, located in the front of the ship. His initial motive in writing the memoir was to expose the poor treatment of common sailors at sea. The ship was bound with U.S. goods to trade with the missions and ports for cow hides in California, a Mexican colony. The book recounts stays along the coast from San Diego, San Juan Capistrano, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Monterey and San Francisco, the heavy work involved in transporting the hides, and the ways of the Native Americans and Mexican Californios. Dana learns Spanish and becomes interpreter for the ship. The book is famous for his account of the mid-winter return voyage around Cape Horn that took weeks as they battled storms, wind, cold and icebergs, cited by Herman Melville as the best description ever written of the perils of Cape Horn.  The book was made into a popular film starring Alan Ladd in 1946.

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