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"A Medium in Which I Seek Relief": Manuscripts of American Sailors 1919-1940

Richard Henry Dana: The Godfather

Richard Henry Dana Jr.’s Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea, published in 1840, was a popular memoir of sea life written from the perspective of the common sailor. In the text, Dana described his time on merchant ships from 1834 through 1836. Leaving from Boston, the Pilgrim traveled around South America to California, which at that time was a province of Mexico. There, the crew participated in the "California hide trade," trading goods produced on the East Coast of the United States that weren't readily available in California for hides produced by cattle ranchers. On the return trip on the Alert, while traveling around Cape Horn, the ship navigated icebergs and hazardous winds and storms, producing some of the book’s most memorable passages.

Overall, working conditions were difficult both on the ships and onshore trading for hides. The sailors carried out strenuous manual labor with little time off. Some sailors were also (unfairly in Dana's view) punished with flogging for supposed offenses.
According to John Butler in Sailing on Friday (41), the conditions that Dana experienced were created by the intense demand for fast transport, as Eastern companies depended upon the cattle hides provided by west coast ranchers to make leather products. Likewise, the Californians relied on the goods carried by the eastern ships for survival. This geographic and economic landscape generated “a new breed of sea captain - fearless, hard-driving, and fierce in the use of power.” Frank Thompson, the captain of the Pilgrim, the ship on which Dana sailed, was a perfect specimen of this “new breed”; as Butler says, he “was moody and sadistic, a tyrannical commander, and an inept seamen” (42). In 1835, while the Pilgrim was in California, a new law passed Congress providing some protections for mariners, but the law was weak and difficult to enforce (43).

During Dana’s two years at sea he kept a journal, which eventually became the basis for Two Years Before the Mast, and read as many books as he could get his hands on. Dana had a measure of class privilege unavailable to most sailors, and never planned to remain at sea. His father, Richard Henry Dana Sr., was a lawyer, poet, and Harvard graduate. Likewise, Dana Jr. was a Harvard student; he went to sea after withdrawing due to problems with his eyes caused by measles. After his time as a sailor, he reentered Harvard and followed in his father's footsteps by becoming a lawyer. He continued to champion the rights of mariners, defending seamen abused by captains. In 1841 he published The Seaman's Friend, a manual that explains nautical terms and traditions. He also joined the Free Soil movement, advocating for the abolition of slavery on the western frontier (Butts). In 1859 he travelled to Cuba and published an account of his trip, To Cuba and Back.

Despite his other accomplishments, Dana will always be remembered first and foremost as the author of Two Years Before the Mast, a classic of American sea writing. His memoir inspired dozens of aspiring sailor authors to tell their own stories, including Cecil Northrop, whose previously unpublished "Two Months Before the Mast," is transcribed and analyzed on this site.

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"Great stuff but your entry could use some longer quotations from TWO YEARS to illustrate the impact of the work. How about the flogging scene? Or anything you think works well—sailor talk passages, work passages, etc. Sorry for bringing up Melville, but do you know the letters he wrote Dana? (Dana was the first person Melville mentioned writing his “Whale book” to in a letter….)
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1. Richard Henry Dana: The Godfather Richard Henry Dana Jr.’s Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea, published in 1840, was a popular memoir of sea life written from the perspective of the common sailor. In the text, Dana described his time on merchant ships from 1834 through 1836. Leaving from Boston, the Pilgrim traveled around South America to California, which at that time was a province of Mexico. There, the crew participated in the "California hide trade," trading goods produced on the East Coast of the United States that weren't readily available in California for hides produced by cattle ranchers. On the return trip on the Alert, while traveling around Cape Horn, the ship navigated icebergs and hazardous winds and storms, producing some of the book’s most memorable passages.
  
  Overall, working conditions were difficult both on the ships and onshore trading for hides. The sailors carried out strenuous manual labor with little time off. Some sailors were also (unfairly in Dana's view) punished with flogging for supposed offenses.
  According to John Butler in Sailing on Friday (41), the conditions that Dana experienced were created by the intense demand for fast transport, as Eastern companies depended upon the cattle hides provided by west coast ranchers to make leather products. Likewise, the Californians relied on the goods carried by the eastern ships for survival. This geographic and economic landscape generated “a new breed of sea captain - fearless, hard-driving, and fierce in the use of power.” Frank Thompson, the captain of the Pilgrim, the ship on which Dana sailed, was a perfect specimen of this “new breed”; as Butler says, he “was moody and sadistic, a tyrannical commander, and an inept seamen” (42). In 1835, while the Pilgrim was in California, a new law passed Congress providing some protections for mariners, but the law was weak and difficult to enforce (43).
  
  During Dana’s two years at sea he kept a journal, which eventually became the basis for Two Years Before the Mast, and read as many books as he could get his hands on. Dana had a measure of class privilege unavailable to most sailors, and never planned to remain at sea. His father, Richard Henry Dana Sr., was a lawyer, poet, and Harvard graduate. Likewise, Dana Jr. was a Harvard student; he went to sea after withdrawing due to problems with his eyes caused by measles. After his time as a sailor, he reentered Harvard and followed in his father's footsteps by becoming a lawyer. He continued to champion the rights of mariners, defending seamen abused by captains. In 1841 he published The Seaman's Friend, a manual that explains nautical terms and traditions. He also joined the Free Soil movement, advocating for the abolition of slavery on the western frontier (Butts). In 1859 he travelled to Cuba and published an account of his trip, To Cuba and Back.
  
  Despite his other accomplishments, Dana will always be remembered first and foremost as the author of Two Years Before the Mast, a classic of American sea writing. His memoir inspired dozens of aspiring sailor authors to tell their own stories, including Cecil Northrop, whose previously unpublished "Two Months Before the Mast," is transcribed and analyzed on this site.

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Cecil Northrop Biographical Note Cecil Pinckney Northrop was born September 7, 1901 in Brooklyn, NY. At age 18 he shipped out to sea on a freighter. In 1921 he continued his maritime path by enrolling in the New York State Nautical School (now SUNY Maritime College), training on the Schoolship Newport. After graduating in 1922 he worked as fourth officer on a freighter from 1922-1923. From 1923-27 he worked as a third and then second officer for the Dollar Line's "Round the World" cruises aboard the SS President Hayes.

During his years as a mariner, Northrop kept extensive diaries (handwritten and typed) where he recorded his impressions of life aboard the ship, foreign ports visited, people he met on his travels, and relationships with friends, family, and love interests. It appears Northrop was compiling some of the manuscripts into essays, and viewed his writing as part of the great sea narrative tradition popularized by Richard Henry Dana in the 1840s.

On February 1, 1927 Northrop married Lucy Stewart of Washington, Pennsylvania, whom he met on one of the cruises. That same year he retired from the seafaring life and become editor of the Dominion-Post newspaper in Morgantown, West Virginia.

In the 1930s Northrop trained as airline pilot and joined the Pennsylvania Airlines. Between 1940-1944 he worked with the Airlines War Training Institute, formed in 1939 to train transport pilots for coming war. Northrop served as chairman of the Celestial Navigation Committee and later as supervisor of pilot training.

From 1945 to 1949 Northrop served as vice-president of Observer Publishing Company in Washington, PA. On May 21, 1949 he died of a heart attack. Northrop was survived by his wife, Lucy, and two children, John L.S. Northrop and William B. Northrop.

Only a small sample of Northrop's manuscripts are presented in this site. For more information see the Cecil Northrop Papers finding aid. His maritime papers are held by the Stephen B. Luce Library of SUNY Maritime College and his aviation papers are held by the Smithsonian.

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