Two Years Before the Mast | Page 4

we have since learned of the fate of crew and vessels, and a brief account of Mr. Dana himself and his important lifework, which appears more fully in his published biography[1] and printed speeches and letters.[2] This concluding chapter will take the place of the biographic sketch prefixed to the last authorized edition. There is also added an appendix with a list of the crews of the two vessels in which Mr. Dana sailed, extracts from a log, and also plates of spars, rigging and sails, with names, to aid the reader.
In the winter of 1879-80 I sailed round Cape Horn in a full-rigged ship from New York to California. At the latter place I visited the scenes of ``Two Years Before the Mast.'' At the old town of San Diego I met Jack Stewart, my father's old shipmate, and as we were looking at the dreary landscape and the forlorn adobe houses and talking of California of the thirties, he burst out into an encomium of the accuracy and fidelity to details of my father's book. He said, ``I have read it again and again. It all comes back to me, everything just as it happened. The seamanship is perfect.'' And then as if to emphasize it all, with the exception that proves the rule, he detailed one slight case where he thought my father was at fault,---a detail so slight that I now forget what it is. In reading the Log kept by the discharged mate, Amerzeen, on the return trip in the Alert, I find that every incident there recorded, from running aground at the start at San Diego Harbor, through the perilous icebergs round the Horn, the St. Elmo's fire, the scurvy of the crew and the small matters like the painting of the vessel, to the final sail up Boston Harbor, confirms my father's record. His former shipmate, the late B. G. Stimson, a distinguished citizen of Detroit, said the account of the flogging was far from an exaggeration, and Captain Faucon of the Alert also during his lifetime frequently confirmed all that came under his observation. Such truth in the author demands truth in illustration, and I have cooperated with the publishers in securing a painting of the Alert under full sail and other illustrations, both colored and in pen and ink, faithful to the text in every detail.
Accuracy, however, is not the secret of the success of this book. Its flowing style, the use of short Anglo-Saxon words,[3] its picturesqueness, the power of description, the philosophic arrangement all contribute to it, but chiefly, I believe, the enthusiasm of the young Dana, his sympathy for his fellows and interest in new scenes and strange peoples, and with it all, the real poetry that runs through the whole. As to its poetry, I will quote from Mrs. Bancroft's ``Letters from England,'' giving the opinion of the poet Samuel Rogers:
``London, June 20, 1847.
``The 19th, Sat. we breakfasted with Lady Byron and my friend Miss Murray, at Mr. Rogers'. . . . After breakfast he had been repeating some lines of poetry which he thought fine, when he suddenly exclaimed, `But there is a bit of American prose, which, I think, has more poetry in it, than almost any modern verse.' He then repeated, I should think, more than a page from Dana's `Two Years Before the Mast' describing the falling overboard of one of the crew, and the effect it produced, not only at the moment, but for some time afterward. I wondered at his memory, which enabled him to recite so beautifully a long prose passage, so much more difficult than verse. Several of those present, with whom the book was a favorite, were so glad to hear from me that it was as true as interesting, for they had regarded it as partly a work of imagination.''
In writing the book Mr. Dana had a motive which inspired him to put into it his very best. The night after the flogging of his two fellow-sailors off San Pedro, California, Mr. Dana, lying in his berth, ``vowed that, if God should ever give me the means, I would do something to redress the grievances and relieve the sufferings of that class of beings with whom my lot has been so long cast.'' This vow he carried out in no visionary scheme of mutiny or foolish ``paying back'' to the captain, but by awakening a ``strong sympathy'' for the sailors ``by a voice from the forecastle,'' in his ``Two Years Before the Mast.''
While at sea he made entries almost daily in a pocket notebook and at leisure hours wrote these out fully. This full account of his voyage was lost with his trunk containing sailors' clothes and all souvenirs and presents for family and friends by the