Richard Henry Dana

Richard Henry Dana dropped out of school and became an ordinary deckhand on the brig Pilgrim. The perilous journey from Boston, begun in 1834, took the ailing yet determined youth past Cape Horn and around the Americas, concluding in the Mexican territory California.

This expedition inspired Two Years Before the Mast, a first-hand account of "the life of a common sailor" a work that combines history, philosophy, and personal experience.