In 1834 Richard Henry Dana, aged nineteen, broke off his studies at Harvard and enlisted as a Jack-tar on the brig Pilgrim. This is a faithful account of his voyage and experiences including storms round Cape Horn, pursuit by pirates and meeting many strange characters from foreign lands. It details the excruciating day to day existence in the American Merchant Service under a violent disciplinarian Captain Thompson, a `regular built down-east Johnny Cake, when its hot, damned good but when its cold, damned sour and indigestible’ whose use of the rope to keep order was not uncommon. `It is written out from a journal which I kept at the time and from notes which I made of most of the events as they happened and in it I have adhered closely to fact in every particular, and endeavoured to give each thing its true character' Dana maintained. It is both an exhilarating adventure story and a fascinating slice of history. This version is abridged to appeal to a wider audience.

Richard Henry Dana (1815 - 1882) was an American lawyer and politician, and author of the book Two Years Before the Mast. He was born into one of the first families of Cambridge, Massachusetts, grandson of Francis Dana, and attended Harvard College.

Having trouble with his vision after a bout of the measles, he thought a voyage might help his failing sight. Rather than going on a Grand Tour of Europe, in 1834 he left Harvard to enlist as a common sailor on a voyage around Cape Horn to the then-remote California, at that time still a part of Mexico. He set sail on the brig Pilgrim, visited a number of settlements in California (including Monterey, San Pedro, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Santa Clara), and returned to Massachusetts two years later as a deckhand on the Indiaman Alert, after making a winter passage around Cape Horn. He set foot back in Boston in September 1836. He kept a diary, and after the trip wrote Two Years Before the Mast based on his experiences.