"The Master is a policeman as well as a Judge. His revolver and rife are always loaded.
He has his dogs, his trackers and seizers. No man rides unarmed."
Join Abolitionist Richard Henry Dana, as he explores Spanish Cuba of 1859, where kidnapped Black Africans
were slaves on vast sugar plantations, along with impoverished Chinese Coolies, suffering
under unbreakable eight- year contracts.
Dana visited Cuba on a fact finding mission he calls a "vacation voyage." He describes Cuban slavery,
explores Cuban society, institutions, educational systems and exposes a corrupt prison system,
where the more a prisoner pays, the less he is punished.
Richard Henry Dana referred to this book as 'a voice from the sea.' It is a book which influenced Conrad and Melville, and it has become a maritime classic which has inflicted legions of men with a passion for the sea.
Dana, a law student turned sailor for health reasons, sailed in 1834 on the brig Pilgrim for a voyage from Boston around Cape Horn to California. (Hence Dana Point was named). Drawing from his journals, Two Years Before the Mast gives a vivid and detailed account, shrewdly observed and beautifully described, of a common sailor's wretched treatment at sea, and of a way of life virtually unknown at that time.
'Possesses'the romantic charm of Robinson Crusoe.''Ralph Waldo Emerson
In 1834, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., went from Harvard student to common seaman, sailing from California to Cape Horn. This journal survives as one of the most vivid accounts of the relationship between man and sea---and still rings true as a portrayal of man's endurance.
