Dana, Richard Henry, Jr.
Dana, Richard Henry, Jr.( 1815–82),son of R.H. Dana, Sr., was born at Cambridge, where he was reared according to conventional New England standards. He suffered serious eye trouble as a sophomore at Harvard, and to regain his health sailed for California as a common sailor (1834). On the Pacific coast he worked for more than a year gathering hides, after which he returned to Boston and completed his education at Harvard law school. In fulfillment of his vows “to redress the grievances and suffering of that class of beings with whom my lot had so long been cast,” his first publication was an article in the American Jurist (1839) on Cruelty to Seamen. In 1840, the year of his admission to the bar, he published the famous account of his voyage, Two Years Before the Mast, which won immediate popularity, created many imitators and followers of its realistic approach, and permanently influenced the literature of the sea. His...
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