From Richard Henry Dana's, Two Years Before the Mast, originally
published in 1840. Below is excerpted from Chapter xxiii, from a section
dated Sunday, October 4th [1835]:
This leads me to speak of my watchmate for nine months - and, taking
him
in all, the most remarkable man I had ever seen - Tom
Harris. An hour,
every night while lying in port, Harris and I had the deck to ourselves,
and walking fore and aft, night after night, for months, I learned
his
character and history, and more about foreign nations, the habits of
different people, and especially the secrets of sailors' lives and
hardships, and also practical seamanship (in which he was abundantly
capable of instructing me) than I could ever have learned elsewhere.
His memory was perfect, seeming to form a regular chain, reaching from
his earliest childhood up to the time I knew him, without a link
wanting. His power of calculation, too, was extraordinary.
I called
myself pretty quick at figures, and had been through a course of
mathematical studies; but, working by my head, I was unable to keep
within sight of this man, who had never been beyond his arithmetic.
He
carried in his head, not only a log-book of the voyage, which was
complete and accurate, and from which no one thought of appealing,
but
also an accurate registry of the cargo, knowing where each thing was
stowed, and how many hides we took in at each port.
One night he made a rough calculation of the number of hides
that could
be stowed in the lower hold, between the fore and main masts, taking
the
depth of the hold and breadth of beam (for he knew the dimensions of
every part of a ship before he had been on board), and the average
area
and thickness of a hide; and he came surprisingly near the number,
as it
afterwards turned out. The mate frequently came to him to know
the
capacity of different parts of the vessel, and he could tell the
sailmaker very nearly the amount of canvas he would want for each sail
in the ship; for he knew the hoist of every mast, and spread of each
sail, on the head and foot, in feet and inches. When we were
at sea, he
kept a running account, in his head, of the ship's way - the number
of
knots and the courses; and, if the courses did not vary much during
the
twenty-four hours, by taking the whole progress and allowing so many
eighths southing and northing, to so many easting or westing, he would
make up his reckoning just before the captain took the sun at noon,
and
very often came very near the mark. He had, in his chest, several
volumes giving accounts of inventions in mechanics, which he read with
great pleasure, and made himself master of. I doubt if he forgot
anything that he read. The only thing in the way of poetry that
he ever
read was Falconer's "Shipwreck," which he was charmed with, and the
pages of which he could repeat. He said he could recall the name
of
every sailor that had ever been his shipmate, and also of every vessel,
captain, and officer, and the principal dates of each voyage; and a
sailor whom we afterwards fell in with, who had been in a ship with
Harris nearly twelve years before, was much surprised at having Harris
tell him things about himself which he had entirely forgotten.
His
facts, whether dates or events, no one thought of disputing; and his
opinions few of the sailors dared to oppose, for, right or wrong, he
always had the best of the argument with them. His reasoning
powers
were striking. I have had harder work maintaining an argument
with him
in a watch, even when I knew myself to be right, and he was only
doubting, than I ever had before, not from his obstinacy, but from
his
acuteness. Give him only a little knowledge of his subject, and,
among
all the young men of my acquaintance at college, there is not one whom
I
had not rather meet in an argument than this man. I never answered
a
question from him, or advanced an opinion t him, without thinking more
than once. With an iron memory, he seemed to have your whole
past
conversation at command, and if you said a thing now which ill agreed
with something you had said months before, he was sure to have you
on
the hip. In fact, I felt, when with him, that I was with no common
man. I had a positive respect for his powers of mind, and thought,
often, that if half the pains had been spent upon his education which
are thrown away yearly, in our colleges, he would have made his mark.
Like many self-taught men of real merit, he overrated the value of
a
regular education; and this I often told him, though I had profited
by
his error; for he always treated me with respect, and often
unnecessarily gave way to me, from an over-estimate of my knowledge.
For the intellectual capacities of all the rest of the crew - captain
and all - he had a sovereign contempt. He was a far better sailor,
and
probably a better navigator, than the captain, and had more brains
than
all the after part of the ship put together. The sailors said,
"Tom's
got a head as long as the bowsprit," and if any one fell into an
argument with him, they would call out: "Ah, Jack! you had better drop
that as you would a hot potato, for Tom will turn you inside out before
you know it!"
I recollect his posing me once on the subject of the Corn Laws.
I was
called to stand my watch, and coming on deck, found him there before
me;
and we began, as usual, to walk fore and aft, in the waist. He
talked
about the Corn Laws; asked me my opinion about them, which I gave him,
and my reasons, my small stock of which I set forth to the best
advantage, supposing his knowledge on the subject must be less than
mine, if, indeed, he had any at all. When I had got through,
he took
the liberty of differing from me, and brought arguments and facts which
were new to me, and to which I was unable to reply. I confessed
that I
knew almost nothing of the subject, and confessed my surprise at the
extent of his information. He said that, a number of years before,
while at a boarding-house in Liverpool, he had fallen in with a pamphlet
on the subject, and, as it contained calculations, he had read it very
carefully, and had ever since wished to find some one who could add
to
his stock of knowledge on the question. Although it was many
years
since he had seen the book, and it was a subject with which he had
had
no previous acquaintance, yet he had the chain of reasoning, founded
upon principles of political economy, fully in his memory; and his
facts, so far as I could judge, were correct; at least, he stated them
with precision. The principles of the steam-engine, too, he was
familiar with, having been several months on board a steamboat, and
made
himself master of its secrets. He knew every lunar star in both
hemispheres, and was a master of the quadrant and sextant. The
men said
he could take a meridian altitude of the sun from a tar bucket.
Such
was the man, who, at forty, was still a dog before the mast, at twelve
dollars a month. The reason of this was to be found in his past
life,
as I had it, at different times, from himself.
He was an Englishman, a native of Ilfracomb, in Devonshire.
His father
was skipper of a small coaster from Bristol, and, dying, left him,
when
quite young, to the care of his mother, by whose exertions he received
a
common-school education, passing his winters at school and his summers
in the coasting trade until his seventeenth year, when he left home
to
go upon foreign voyages. Of his mother he spoke with the greatest
respect, and said that she was a woman of a strong mind, and had an
excellent system of education, which had made respectable men of his
three brothers, and failed in him only from his own indomitable
obstinacy. One thing he mentioned, in which he said his mother
differed
from all other mothers that he has ever seen disciplining their
children; that was, that when he was out of humour and refused to eat,
instead of putting his plate away, saying that his hunger would bring
him to it in time, she would stand over him and oblige him to eat it
-
every mouthful of it. It was no fault of hers that he was what
I saw
him; and so great was his sense of gratitude for her efforts, though
unsuccessful, that he determined when the voyage should end, to embark
for home with all the wages he should get, to spend with and for his
mother, if perchance he should find her alive.
After leaving home, he had spent nearly twenty years sailing
all sorts
of voyages, generally out of the ports of New York and Boston.
Twenty
years of vice! Every sin that a sailor knows, he had gone to
the bottom
of. Several times he had been hauled up in the hospitals, and
as often
the great strength of his constitution had brought him out again in
health. Several times, too, from his acknowledged capacity, he
had been
promoted to the office of chief mate, and as often his conduct when
in
port, especially his drunkenness, which neither fear nor ambition could
induce him to abandon, put him back into the forecastle. One
night,
when giving me an account of his life, and lamenting the years of
manhood he had thrown away, "There," said he, "in the forecastle, at
the
foot of those steps, a chest of old clothes is the result of twenty-two
years of hard labour and exposure - worked like a horse, and treated
like a dog." As he had grown older, he began to feel the necessity
of
some provision for his later years, and came gradually to the conviction
that rum had been his worst enemy. One night, in Havana, a young
shipmate of his was brought aboard drunk, with a dangerous gash in
his
head, and his money and new clothes stripped from him. Harris
had been
in hundreds of such scenes as these, but in his then state of mind
it
fixed his determination, and he resolved never to taste a drop of strong
drink of any kind. He signed no pledge, and made no vow, but
relied on
his own strength of purpose. The first thing with him was to
reason,
and then a resolution, and the thing was done. The date of his
resolution he knew, of course, to the very hour --it was three years
before I became acquainted with him; and during all that time nothing
stronger than cider or coffee had passed his lips. The sailors
never
thought of enticing Tom to take a glass, any more than they would of
talking to the ship's compass. He was by now a temperate man
for life,
and capable of filling any berth in a ship, and many a high station
there is on shore which is held by a meaner man.
He understood the management of a ship upon scientific principles,
and
could give the reasons for hauling every rope; and a long experience,
added to careful observation at the time, gave him a knowledge of the
expedients and resorts for times of hazard for which I became much
indebted to him, as he took the greatest pleasure in opening his stores
of information to me, in return for what I was enabled to do for him.
Stories of tyranny and hardship which have driven men to piracy; of
the
incredible ignorance of masters and mates, and of horrid brutality
to
the sick, dead, and dying; as well as of the secret knavery and
impositions practised upon seamen by connivance of the owners,
landlords, and officers - all these he had, and I could not but believe
them; for he made the impression of an exact man, to whom exaggeration
was falsehood; and his statements were always credited. I remember,
among other things, his speaking of a captain whom I had known by report
who never handed a thing to a sailor, but put it on deck and kicked
it
to him; and of another, who was highly connected in Boston, who
absolutely murdered a lad from Boston, who went out with him before
the
mast to Sumatra, by keeping him hard at work while ill of the coast
fever, and obliging him to sleep in the close steerage. (The
same
captain has since died of the same fever, on the same coast.)
In fact, taking together all that I learned from him of seamanship,
of
the history of sailors' lives, of practical wisdom, and of human nature
under new circumstances and strange forms of life - a great history
from
which many are shut out - I would not part with hours I spent on the
watch with that man for the gift of many hours to be passed in study
and
intercourse with even the best of society.
Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast, 1840.
This is a work of non-fiction; the inside-leaf summary reads:
'ROUND THE HORN TO CALIFORNIA!
In 1834, at the end of his junior year at Harvard, Richard Henry Dana,
Jr. was forced by severe illness to interrupt his studies. To
regain
his health this young Boston Brahmin signed aboard the brig Pilgrim,
bound on a voyage 'round the Horn to California, thus leaving for two
adventurous years the company of those "who never walked but one line
from their cradles to their graves."
This book is the imperishable account of that voyage - the free and
fascinating years when young Dana escaped the confining walls of
upper-class Boston society to join the hardy, democratic company of
the
foremast hands, breathe the fresh sea-winds, listen to waves breaking
on
the shores of exotic lands, cast anchor in harbours whose names were
almost legend . . .
The back cover reads:
TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST is a unique autobiography: the portrait of
a
Harvard undergraduate who put off his tight frock coat and kid gloves
for the loose ducks and checked shirt of an ordinary seaman.
It is also
the first book which realistically depicted the rough-treated,
poorly-paid man in the forecastle, and heralded a movement to improve
his lot. But it lives, above all, as a matchless tale of adventure.
For here, without adornment, is a square-rigger sailing the open seas:
the squalls and calms and thunderstorms; the desolate beaches of
little-known coasts; the strange and fascinating inhabitants of exotic
ports-of-call.
Thanks to:
Gavin Glenn Harris
Birmingham, Alabama
