Talk:Two Years Before the Mast

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California Mid‑importance

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Books

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Expansion[edit]

Can someone expand this? I find it horribly lacking in all areas.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.147.188.38 (talk • contribs) 01:36, 7 November 2005

What does "all areas" refer to? Or was your question rhetorical. The article is not great, but its not bad, its much better than the same entry in Marriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature. Stbalbach 04:37, 7 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Pardon me, but I thought the purpose of a discussion page is to dicuss the book's impact on readers. I read the book while living in San Diego in the 70's, after one year at sea as an enlisted U.S. Navy sailor. I learned more about the life at sea, the Pacific Ocean, and California history than I could have imagined was ever committed to paper. Dana's description of putting to sea for the first time, with men barefoot scurrying about the deck and climbing the rigging in response to shouted, seemingly incomprehensable orders to be more authentic than my own recollection of the first time I put to sea. I found the basic outline to be quite concise. Dana is so much easier to understand than the unabridged version of Moby Dick; several chapters of which are preposterously technical. Dana tells the reader how bad Whalers looked and smelled in just a few paragraphs. As the all-time best non-fiction sea story, Sebastian Junger's Perfect Storm is aguably the only modern-day challenger. The only way anyone could expand the outline "in all areas", would be to include the entire text. W8IMP 07:26, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, the purpose of the talk page is to discuss how to improve the article, although IMHO personal impressions such as yours are OK too, since they often have insights into ways to tweak the article. Stan 15:45, 18 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ditto on the purpose of this talk page, and ditton on the personal impressions too. Basically, situation normal here. I found the article to be concise and informative (and I've read the book). If you want to fix something specific, propose it here or fire up the keyboard and do it. --- 69.109.227.227 19:12, 28 October 2006 (UTC) Oops, didn't realize I wasn't logged in. --- Markspace 19:12, 28 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Unsourced material[edit]

Below information was tagged for needing sources long-term. Feel free to reinsert with appropriate references. DonIago (talk) 12:56, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sailor's story

== 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 gives vivid descriptions of the different groups he encountered on the journey. He described Californios as lazy and remarked that the local Indians were effectively enslaved by them, yet he also described the Indians as lazy. He wrote disdainfully of the uncleanliness and sloppiness of whaling ships — and even more so of the Russian vessel he encountered, claiming that the Russian crew actually "lived upon grease; eat it, drank it, slept in the midst of it, and their clothes were covered with it." The one group he seemed to view quite favorably were the native Hawaiians in the area, or Kanakas as they were called, saying they were honest, generous, hard-working folk, though of no use to a ship in arctic conditions.

After his embarkement, when his excitement about this completely new and very different life calmed down, he realised that seaman had no rights at all on board a ship and were treated miserably. Concerning the conditions they had to work under, the constant danger, miserable accommodation, food, punishments, duration of the trip they were constantly lied about to, payment, and all the rest depending on the mood and capability of captain of the ship making survival possible or not - which in many cases caused even more problems.

With his book he wanted to make these terrible conditions known to the public to change matters for the seaman. In a time when seaman didn't have unions or anyone to protect them (which is still the case nowadays in some places), in a time when seaman were seen as the "lazy ones" heading off to sunlit islands simply enjoying their time.

He clearly managed to destroy this view, he managed to make people aware of what is actually going on out there on ships, and he managed to get public attention to the problem.

As a result he managed to help the turnaround to improve conditions for seaman, which is quite an achievement for the time of writing this book.

Extremely amazing is the description of nowadays highly populated areas on the Pacific coast of North and Central America, which in these times were nothing but an outpost with its hazards to load hides.

For sailors, be it recreational or other, there is quite a lot of very interesting ways of dealing with a lot of situations involved that can be a huge help even today in the book.