I guess I must be on a Richard Henry Dana kick this week. When I read the prompt, I began thinking about my post from yesterday of Dana’s Seaman’s Friend.*
Dana is widely known to the world of literature as the author of Two Years Before the Mast. In fact, the voyage, first on the Pilgrim and finally on the Alert, was just the beginning of an auspicious legal career with a specialization in maritime law. The Seaman’s Friend may have had a more profound effect on the lives of seamen than Two Years Before the Mast did on literature. The Seaman’s Friend offered a huge amount of practical information needed for life at sea. But in a day when seamen were badly abused it also offered information on seaman’s rights, contracts and other legal aspects of life at sea.
Still More!
But wait! There’s more! Dana was the scion of a well-to-do Cambridge, Massachusetts family. Dana did not take the popular, among the wealthy, Grand Tour of European capitals and hot spots. He signed on board the Pilgrim as a common seaman for a voyage to California ( then a part of Mexico). In short, he went to see the elephant. A man after my own heart.
Instead of following the prescribed equation for a young man of the day, he chose the sea, and what I’ve called Ground Level Travel as his teacher.
His time spent at the outpost of Point Loma, curing and packing hides for shipment east, could not have been an easy one. But while there, he became familiar with workers from Hawaii and local Californian Mexicans. It must have been a huge cultural education for a young man from a well-heeled Cambridge neighborhood.
Most importantly, when he returned to Cambridge, he didn’t just put his experiences behind him as some sort of youthful idleness. He went to law school at Harvard and specialized in maritime law, served his country, and was an abolitionist.
So I’d have to say that Dana is a hero to me, as well as a favored historical figure. He was a multi-dimensional figure who left his mark in several areas. And he wasn’t afraid of a bit of adventure.
*https://loucarrerascarver.com/2025/06/18/the-seamans-friend/
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Sounds like a truly courageous soul!
As to sailors being “badly abused”: I once read that circa 1500 every Dutch ship leaving port carried a crew of twice as many seamen as would be needed to bring the ship home again. Anticipating half of them would die en route.
One case that Dana was involved in the Captain and first mate beat a saailor to death for not jumping into action fast enough. Even today it’s no easy berth, with seamen restricted to the ship while in port in many ports, and among many shipping companies.
Awful!
My gr-gr-granpa, a boy of nine, was taken by a press gang from what he guessed was London, kept on board ship four years! Managed to escape at Halifax and they turned the ships guns on him to shoot him for desertion. Thankfully he made it to the woods and hid. Of course never saw England or family again.
The “Crimps” here in the US, and I assume probably Canada as well, worked in every port. They did the dirty work for the merchant navies. the typical thing was getting a “Mickey Finn” in your drink, and waking up on a whaler bound to the south Sea. Crimps or press gangs, seamen had it rough.
Sounds like a person who believed in “walking the Walk”
True!