Richard Henry Dana was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1815. He entered Harvard University in 1831, but two years later he came down with a severe case of measles that seriously affected his eyesight. After a year, Dana decided to see a bit of the world; his doctor hoped a sea voyage would help restore decent vision. He signed on to the brig Pilgrim. The ship belonged to the firm of Bryant, Sturgis, and Co., one of the major players in the hide and tallow trade in Alta California. The title of Dana’s book referred to the area below decks in front of the mast where the sailors slept.
The Pilgrim took three months to reach California. The crew endured raging storms, rat-infested quarters, poor food, and the iron hand of the ship’s captain, Francis Thompson. Dana was appalled by what he viewed as Thompson’s despotism and cruelty, bordering on sadism. He described one incident when two sailors were “flogged like a beast,” apparently for little reason. Upon his return to the East, Dana would write an article for a legal journal, “Cruelty to Seamen.”
The ship’s first California stop was Santa Barbara. The small pueblo had no pier, and Dana describes the difficulty of rowing from three miles offshore through the surf to offload supplies and take on hides and tallow. Perhaps the most famous portion of Two Years Before the Mast, at least for local readers, is the description of the three-day party to celebrate the marriage of Ana María de la Guerra to Alfred Robinson. Dana makes special mention of the traditional cascarones, the eggshells filled with perfume or other substances to be cracked over the heads of the unsuspecting, a tradition that is still part of our own Fiesta.