A Sailor's Story
The term "before the mast" refers to the quarters of the common sailors — in the forecastle, in the front of the ship. His writing evidences his later sympathy with the lower classes; he later became a prominent anti-slavery activist and helped found the Free Soil Party.
Dana did not set out to write Two Years Before the Mast as a sea adventure, but to highlight how poorly common sailors were treated on ships. It quickly became a best seller.
Read more about this topic: Two Years Before The Mast
Famous quotes containing the words sailor and/or story:
“The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head—no intricate game of chess where few moves are made in straight-forwardness and ends are attained by indirection, an oblique, tedious, barren game hardly worth that poor candle burnt out in playing it.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Come all you rounders if you want to hear
A story ‘bout a brave engineer;
Casey Jones, that was the rounder’s name
On a heavy eight-wheeler he rode to fame.”
—Unknown. Casey Jones (l. 1–4)