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THE SEAMAN'S MANUAL
CONTAINING
A TREATISE ON PRACTICAL SEAMANSHIP
A DICTIONARY OF SEA TERMS
;
CUSTOMS AND USAGES OF THE MERCHANT SERVICEandLAWS RELATING TO THE PRACTICAL DUTIES OF MASTER AND MARINERS
BY RICHARD HENRY DANA Jun
.,
Author of 
"
Two Years Before The Mast
"
LONDON
:
EDWARD MOXON
,
DOVER STREET
1
 
Richard Henry Dana Jr.
(August 1, 1815 – January 6, 1882) was an American lawyer andpolitician from Massachusetts, a descendant of an eminent colonial family who gained renownas the author of the American classic, the memoir
Two Years Before the Mast 
. Both as a writerand as a lawyer, he was a champion of the downtrodden, from seamen to fugitive slaves.Dana was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on August 1, 1815 into a family that had settledin colonial America in 1640, counting Anne Bradstreet among its ancestors. His father was thepoet and critic Richard Henry Dana, Sr. As a boy, Dana studied in Cambridgeport under a strictschoolmaster named Samuel Barrett, alongside fellow Cambridge native and future writer James Russell Lowell Barrett was infamous as a disciplinarian who punished his students forany infraction by flogging. He also often pulled students by their ears and, on one suchoccasion, nearly pulled Dana's ear off, causing the boy's father to protest enough that thepractice was abolished. In 1825, Dana enrolled in a private school overseen by Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom Danalater mildly praised as "a very pleasant instructor", though he lacked a "system or disciplineenough to insure regular and vigorous study." In July 1831, Dana enrolled at Harvard College,where in his freshman year his support of a student protest cost him a six month suspension.
[5] 
In his junior year, he contracted measles, which in his case led to ophthalmia.Fatefully, the worsening vision inspired him to take a sea voyage. But rather than going on afashionable Grand Tour of Europe, he decided to enlist as a merchant seaman, despite hishigh-class birth.'
Pilgrim
',
a replica of Dana's first ship now used for Sail Training
2
 
On August 14, 1834 he departed Boston aboard the brig
Pilgrim
bound for California, at thattime still a part of Mexico. This voyage would bring Dana to a number of settlements inCalifornia (including Monterey, San Pedro, San Juan Capistrano, San Diego, Santa Barbara,Santa Clara, and San Francisco). After witnessing a flogging on board the ship, he vowed thathe would try to help improve the lot of the common seaman. The
Pilgrim
collected hides forshipment to Boston, and Dana spent much of his time in California tanning hides and loadingthem onto the ship. To return home sooner, he caught a different ship, the
 Alert 
, and onSeptember 22, 1836, Dana arrived back in Massachusetts.He thereupon enrolled at Harvard Law School. He graduated from there in 1837 and wasadmitted to the bar in 1840.
He went on to specialize in maritime law writing
The Seaman's Friend 
in 1841, whichbecame a standard reference on the legal rights and responsibilities of sailors anddefending many common seamen in court
.He had kept a diary during his voyages, and in 1840 (coinciding with his admission to the bar)he published a memoir,
Two Years Before the Mast 
, an American classic. The term, "before themast" refers to sailors' quarters, which were located in the forecastle (the ship's bow), officers'quarters being near the stern. His writing evidences his later social feeling for the oppressed.With the California Gold Rush later in the decade,
Two Years Before the Mast 
would becomehighly sought after as one of the few sources of information on California.He became a prominent abolitionist, helping to found the anti-slavery Free Soil Party in 1848and representing the fugitive slave Anthony Burns in Boston in 1854, in 1853 he representedWilliam T.G. Morton in Morton's attempt to establish that he discovered the "AnaestheticProperties of Ether" and in 1859, while the U.S. Senate was considering whether the UnitedStates should try to annex the Spanish possession of Cuba, Dana traveled there and visitedHavana, a sugar plantation, a bullfight, and various churches, hospitals, schools, and prisons, atrip documented in his book
To Cuba and Back 
.During the American Civil War, Dana served as a United States Attorney and successfullyargued before the Supreme Court that the United States Government could rightfully blockadeConfederate ports. During 1867 - 1868 Dana was a member of the Massachusetts legislatureand also served as a U.S. counsel in the trial of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. In 1876,his nomination as ambassador to Great Britain was defeated in the Senate by politicalenemies, partly because of a lawsuit for plagiarism brought against him for a legal textbook hehad edited.Dana died of influenza in Rome on January 6, 1882 and is buried in that city's ProtestantCemetery. His son, also named Richard Henry Dana, married Edith Longfellow, daughter of American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.On July 9, 1861, a hot day, Edith Longfellow's mother Fanny was putting locks of her children'shair into an envelope and attempting to seal it with hot sealing wax while Longfellow took anap. Her dress suddenly caught fire, the fire started from a self-lighting match that had fallenon the floor.Fanny was taken to her room to recover and a doctor was called. She was in and out of consciousness throughout the night and was administered ether. The next morning, July 10,1861, she died shortly after 10 o'clock after requesting a cup of coffee. Longfellow, in trying tosave her, had burned himself badly enough that he was unable to attend her funeral. His facialinjuries caused him to stop shaving, thereafter wearing the beard which has become histrademark3
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