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Overview
This special edition of TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST includes updates 24 and 76 years after the initial voyage. Richard Dana writes so that the reader can feel the icy Chilean waters, taste the hardtack, and feel whip upon your flogged back.
Take the voyage with him as he leaves Harvard to travel with a mad captain around South America to the coasts of California. Feel the same passions that influenced Herman Melville in writing his book Moby Dick and made D.H. Lawrence declare, “Dana's small book is a very great book.”
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781945644047 |
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Publisher: | Chump Change |
Publication date: | 01/01/1900 |
Pages: | 198 |
Sales rank: | 535,167 |
Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Read an Excerpt
top hailed, and said he believed it was land, after all. " Land in your eye!" said the mate, who was looking through the telescope; " they are ice islands, if I can see a hole through a ladder"; and a few moments showed the mate to be right; and all our expectations fled; and instead of what we most wished to see we had what we most dreaded, and what we hoped we had seen the last of. We soon, however, left these astern, having passed within about two miles of them, and at sundown the horizon was clear in all directions. Having a fine wind, we were soon up with and passed the latitude of the Cape, and, having stood far enough to the southward to give it a wide berth, we began to stand to the eastward, with a good prospect of being round and steering to the northward, on the other side, in a very few days. But ill luck seemed to have lighted upon us. Not four hours had we been standing on in this course before it fell dead calm, and in half an hour it clouded up, a few straggling blasts, with spits of snow and sleet, came from the eastward, and in an hour more we lay hove-to under a close-reefed main topsail, drifting bodily off to leeward before the fiercest storm that we had yet felt, blowing dead ahead, from the eastward. It seemed as though the genius of the place had been roused at finding that we had nearly slipped through his fingers, and had come down upon us with tenfold fury. The sailors said that every blast, as it shook the shrouds, and whistled through the rigging, said to the old ship, " No, you don't! " " No) you don't! " For eight days we lay drifting about in this manner. Sometimes generally towards noon it fell calm; once or twice a round copper ball showed itselffor a few moments in the place where the sun ought to have been, a puff or two came from t...
Table of Contents
Chapter I. | ||
Departure | ||
First Impressions | ||
Ship's Duties | ||
Chapter II. | ||
First Impressions | ||
Ship's Duties | ||
Chapter III. | ||
Ship's Duties | ||
Chapter IV. | ||
Sundays At Sea | ||
Trouble on Board | ||
Land Ho | ||
A Pampero | ||
Cape Horn | ||
Chapter V. | ||
Cape Horn | ||
A Visit | ||
Chapter VI. | ||
Loss Of a Man | ||
Chapter VII. | ||
Superstitions | ||
Juan Fernandez | ||
Putting the Vessel In Order | ||
Chapter VIII. | ||
Painting | ||
Daily Life | ||
Point Conception | ||
Chapter IX. | ||
Santa Barbara | ||
Beach-Combing | ||
A Southeaster | ||
Chapter X. | ||
A Southeaster | ||
Passage Up the Coast | ||
Chapter XI. | ||
Passage Up the Coast | ||
Monterey | ||
Chapter XII. | ||
Monterey | ||
Chapter XIII. | ||
Monterey | ||
A British Sailor | ||
Santa Barbara | ||
Chapter XIV. | ||
Hide Droghing | ||
Discontent | ||
San Pedro | ||
Flogging | ||
Chapter XV. | ||
Flogging | ||
Night On Shore | ||
State of Things On Board | ||
San Diego | ||
Chapter XVI. | ||
Liberty-Day On Shore | ||
Chapter XVII. | ||
San Diego | ||
Desertion | ||
San Pedro Again | ||
Easter Sunday | ||
Chapter XVIII. | ||
Easter Sunday | ||
Italian Sailors | ||
San Juan | ||
San Diego Again | ||
Life on Shore | ||
Chapter XIX. | ||
Sandwich-Islanders | ||
Hide-Curing | ||
Wood-Cutting | ||
Coyotes | ||
Rattlesnakes | ||
Chapter XX. | ||
New Comers | ||
People at the Hide-Houses | ||
Leisure | ||
Pilgrim News from Home | ||
Pilgrim Occupations on the Beach | ||
California and its Inhabitants | ||
Chapter XXI. | ||
California and its Inhabitants | ||
Chapter XXII. | ||
Life on the Beach | ||
The Alert | ||
Chapter XXIII. | ||
New Ship and Shipmates | ||
A Race | ||
My Watchmate, Tom Harris | ||
San Diego Again | ||
Chapter XXIV. | ||
A Descent | ||
A Hurried Departure | ||
A New Shipmate | ||
Chapter XXV. | ||
Rumors of War | ||
A Spouter | ||
Sudden Slipping for a Southeaster | ||
To Windward | ||
A Dry Gale | ||
Chapter XXVI. | ||
San Francisco | ||
Monterey Revisited | ||
Chapter XVII. | ||
Monterey Revisited | ||
A Set-to | ||
A Decayed Gentleman | ||
A Contrabandista | ||
A Fandango | ||
Chapter XVIII. | ||
A Victim | ||
California Rangers-Beach-Combers | ||
News From Home | ||
Last Looks | ||
Chapter XXIX. | ||
Loading for Home | ||
A Surprise | ||
Last of an Old Friend | ||
The Last Hide | ||
A Hard Case | ||
An Anchor, for Home! | ||
The Alert and California | ||
Homeward Bound | ||
Chapter XXX. | ||
Homeward Bound | ||
Our Passenger, Professor Nuttall | ||
Homeward Bound | ||
Chapter XXXI. | ||
Bad Prospects | ||
First Touch of Cape Horn | ||
Iceburgs | ||
Temperance Ships | ||
Lying-Up | ||
Ice | ||
Difficulty on Board | ||
Change of Course | ||
Straits of Magellan | ||
Chapter XXXII. | ||
Ice Again | ||
Disappointment | ||
Cape Horn | ||
Land Ho! | ||
Chapter XXXIII. | ||
Cracking On | ||
Progress Homeward | ||
A Fine Sight | ||
Fitting Ship | ||
By-Plane | ||
Chapter XXXIV. | ||
An Escape | ||
Equator | ||
Tropical Squalls | ||
Tropical Thunder-Storm | ||
Chapter XXXV. | ||
A Reef-Topsail Breeze | ||
Scurvy | ||
A Friend in Need | ||
Preparing for Port | ||
Gulf Stream | ||
Chapter XXXVI. | ||
Soundings | ||
Sights About Home | ||
Boston Harbo | ||
Leaving the Ship | ||
Twenty Four Years After | 432 |
Reading Group Guide
1. Discuss Dana's motives for the voyage. What do you feel was the predominating factor in his decision to undertake such a journey? What were the risks involved, and how serious do you feel they were? What is your view of Dana's momentous choice?
2. What do you make of Dana's attitude toward religion, and religious instruction? Do you agree or not? Why? Is his a perspective that is anachronistic, or not?
3. How does social class play a role in the book? Discuss the implications of Dana's background. How did it affect his experience on the ship? Did you find it important, or inconsequential?
4. What is your opinion of the book's stark realism? Does Dana have an agenda in writing the book? If so, what is it? Do you think the experience was a positive one for Dana, or not?
5. What is the role of nature and the outdoors for Dana? How does he view the American West? How does his voyage attest to his view of the outdoors? Does this view change throughout his experience on the ship? If so, how?
6. Discuss the contrasts between Captain Thompson and Captain Faucon. How do their leadership skills differ? Who is more effective, and why? Discuss Dana's book on a political level. What do his portrayals of each captain reveal?
7. Discuss the considerable shift in Dana's perspective as evidenced in 'Twenty-Four Years After.' How do you account for this change? Do you agree or disagree with the author's decision to replace the original final chapter with this later account? Why or why not?