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I highly recommend it to others. I learned a great deal about sailing and the adventures of seamanship. This is a wonderful book.
To prepare for the read, I extracted and defined the sailing and rigging terms in order to become familiar with events as they unfolded. What made this book so interesting to read over the years. I delayed reading this book for many years due mainly to my lack of interest in sailing.
It provided insight into seamanship and the knowledge required to forecast weather conditions; it showcased the desires of one man's quest to serve as a seafarer; it highlighted the emotional temperament of the crew as discussions of mutiny surfaced and, it revealed the authority of the ship's captain on the open seas. This is a story about a young college drop out whom, with no sailing experience, decided to forgo college in order to work as a crewman onboard a ship bound to California, Mexico from Boston in 1834.As they sailed from Boston around Cape Horn, his detailed descriptions of disparate crew members, a hostile captain and the experiences of violent weather patterns, throughout the voyage, made for an eventful journey.
The theme of the book focused on teamwork, courage, and coordination as each hour created new challenges from Mother Nature.
His book overflows with run-on sentences and dangling modifiers. Likewise, you can't help but share Dana's shock and alarm when he is abruptly informed that he must find a substitute worker or be abandoned on the California coast.If you want to, or have to, read this book, I suggest a hardcopy with good annotations, rather than this inferior recording. In 1835, an ailing New Englander named Richard Henry Dana thought he might improve his health by taking a break from Harvard law school to voyage to California as a common sailor. When Dana came back, he wrote a book about his experiences, called Two Years Before the Mast. Certainly the terrible moment when Captain Thompson flogs a sailor is unforgettable; the effect on the captain is in some ways scarier than the effect on the victim. I've even dabbled in writing stories and a novel about pirates. A more typical reader would be even less likely to enjoy it.Dana's essential problem is plain poor style.
He is also defeated by the pronunciation of both nautical and Spanish words: he can't say "keelson" or "studdingsail" correctly, and mispronounces the Spanish "gente" as "jenn-tay."There are some moments when the drama of the subject matter is so palpable that Dana can't help but create a memorable scene. His tired, raspy voiceg is completely inappropriate for the narrative of a very young man, and only in a few scenes does he manage to convey any emotion.
Certainly it wasn't the writing.As a rule, I enjoy the classic literature of the Age of Sail: Stevenson's Treasure Island, Sabatini's The Sea Hawk and Captain Blood, and Forester's Horatio Hornblower series are favorites of mine. To the uninitiated, large portions of Dana's book will simply be gobbledygook.Bernard Mayse's reading doesn't help matters.
In those days before the Panama Canal, that meant sailing 14,000 miles around the tip of South America at Cape Horn, and ending up in a foreign country, since Mexico still owned California then. He has a poor sense of consistency; for example, he opens the book by saying that he had determined to save his eyes by abstaining completely from reading, yet later on he is reading voraciously, and we are left wondering at what point he abandoned his no-reading plan.Dana's use of nautical language is so cursory that I was able to learn very little new about shipboard life - and I actually know what yards, jibs, topgallants, mizzenmasts, studdingsails, backstays and fore braces are.
Even then, it will probably take a saltier sea dog than myself to enjoy it. When the huge crowd of gold seekers rolled West in 1849, it happened that Two Years Before the Mast was just about the only available book in English that described California, and it owes its status as an American classic to the resulting wave of sales.
And yet, although I should be an ideal target audience for the book, I didn't like it.
There are pages on end with NO dialogue, and, to me at least, dialogue usually keeps a book more interesting. I and others like me understand. In real life, I'm sure Dana's life at sea was somewhat exciting, but I found very little excitement in this book. However, if you MUST read it, let it be known that you CAN do it. I don't know, maybe I missed something in the book that I should have seen.
It's not impossible, as much as it may seem at times. Dana spent so much time describing the process of preparing a ship and working the ropes. If you are considering reading this for fun, go ahead and try, but don't feel bad if you don't finish it. If you want to learn about life on a ship and California in the 1800s, don't mind a slow read, and have a very long attention span, then go ahead and dive into this book. I did, however, learn more about life at sea and in California in the 1800s. I had to read Two Years Before the Mast for school.
Maybe I started the book with the wrong mindset. I still don't know what to "well" a rope means after reading the book. If this is also your fate, I sympathize. Maybe I didn't pay as much attention to the book as I should have, but I honestly don't see much in this book worth reading. The parts where he is in California tanning hides were somewhat interesting. That's probably the thing that did it for me the most.
It didn't help that I knew almost nothing about sailing- for example, the names of the different ropes and masts. I also didn't realize that the main character was the author until half way through the book, since there was hardly any dialogue, and they never said his name.
Perfect for males age 12 to 99. Teachers miss a great opportunity to create good readers when they don't introduce young people to this book.
He is looking forward to reading it after he finishes reading "Twenty Years After the Mast". My husband requested this book, but hasn't read it yet.
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