Here is an unforgettable page from the book of American history, complete with the lusty episodes which have become so much a part of sea stories. Two Years Before the Mast is the journal of Richard Henry Dana, Jr., during the years 1834-1836 when he was at sea. Through his eyes, the reader becomes a part of two memorable voyages; he sees the young Americas eagerly pushing back their frontiers; he rounds the treacherous Cape Horn and gazes upon the wild, foreign beauty of Spanish California. He shares Dana's delight with the solitude and majesty of the ocean.

In his Introduction, May Lamberton Becker says that Dana's book "was such a vivid, unbiassed, first-hand report of life at sea in the 1830's that it instantly leaped into popularity as the best American sea story every written—and this popularity it has never lost."

From the dust jacket of the Rainbow Classics edition