He lived 'before the mast', meaning his quarters were up forward with the lowly grunts, where he had no special privileges, the captains and mates quarters behind the mast. It recounts a young Harvard mans decision to take time off school and 'cut his teeth' aboard a merchant sailing vessel on a 2-year tour to California between 1834-1836. In its day was one of the most widely read, and important, books ever published. It's because I like to do it!-because I like to do it!-It suits me! That's what I do it for!' … vowed that if God should ever give me the means, I would do something to redress the grievances and relieve the sufferings of that poor class of beings, of whom I then was one. The country abounds in grapes, yet they buy bad wines made in Boston and brought round by us, at an immense price, and retail it among themselves at a real (12½ cents) by the small wine-glass.> 'If you want to know what I flog you for, I'll tell you.

It is the most elegantly formed, and also the quickest fish, in salt water and the rays of the sun striking upon it, in its rapid and changing motions, reflected from the water, make it look like a stray beam from a rainbow.> 'To work hard, live hard, die hard, and go to hell after all, would be hard indeed!'> The Californians are an idle, thriftless people, and can make nothing for themselves. > To do the fish justice, there is nothing more beautiful than the dolphin when swimming a few feet below the surface, on a bright day.

His instinct for social justice is admirable, but can be tedious from a modern perspective. There are almost no characters! Dana sees, or at least describes, the other seamen mostly as abstractions.

But so much of the writing is entirely bland.

There is some interesting history here, told from a first-person perspective, particularly the stops in Santa Barbara and up the California coast. I had wanted to read this book for a long time, but it ended up being quite disappointing.

Dana before the mast