If you grew up in Orange County in the 1980s, as I did, you will recall that part of the fourth-grade curriculum was to take a short trip down to Dana Point to spend a night with your class­mates aboard the Pilgrim, the ship that Richard Henry Dana Jr., after whom Dana Point is named, took to California in 1835.  Dana was an undergraduate at Harvard whose eyesight was so dam­aged by a bout of the measles that he couldn’t do his schoolwork, and who therefore took a job aboard a merchant vessel in the hope that some time at sea would improve his vision.  The Cali­fornia to which he sailed was the distant edge of the world, a desolate province of northern Mexico with only a scattering of coastal settlements, each consisting of a handful of shacks: San Diego, with its fine harbor; San Pedro, gateway to an inland town of a thousand souls, the largest settlement in California, called Los Angeles; Santa Barbara, the Pilgrim’s primary base; the northern commercial center, Monterey.  Further up the coast lay the bay of San Francisco, but no city of that name yet existed along its shores; its future site was home only to a presidio and a mission, both fallen into ruins following the end of the Viceroy­alty of New Spain, and a single shack constructed by a man named William Richardson.  The missions that dotted the Califor­nia coast had collected enormous herds of cattle, and when Dana visited, the economy consisted almost entirely of trade in hides and beef tallow.  The Pilgrim had come to load up on hides, and the most dramatic moment of Two Years Before the Mast comes when the crew receives word that the firm has left instructions to collect forty thousand hides for a different ship, and only then start loading up the Pilgrim, which would therefore not return to Boston for at least three or more likely four years.  Dana had only meant to sail out and back, not spend the bulk of his twenties lugging hides around “on a half-civilized coast, at the ends of the earth”, with no prospect of ever being able to resume his colle­giate career.  A fair chunk of the middle of the book is spent de­tailing his efforts to secure a transfer to a ship heading back sooner⁠—which, as the title suggests, he did.

As the title also suggests, Dana never meant for his book to be a portrait of 1830s California, but rather an account of life at sea from the point of view of a common sailor rather than an officer or a passenger.  (“Before the mast” means “at the front of the ship”, where the common sailors, and not the officers, were quar­tered.)  That life, as described, was pretty hellish⁠—worked half to death day after day, on little or no sleep, often in a howling storm, subject to flogging or any other punishments decreed by a captain who exercised dictatorial authority.  Dana says that he hopes his book will improve the lot of the common sailor, but his proposed remedies are pretty conservative and chiefly involve increased religious education among officers and crew.  As an inside look at the merchant marine, Two Years Before the Mast sold very well.  Then came the Gold Rush.  Hundreds of thousands of people set off for the distant land of California, and many of them wanted to learn something about their destination before they arrived.  And Dana’s book was basically their only choice.  At that point it sold phenomenally.  It also became one of the found­ing texts of the canon of California literature.  We didn’t read it in fourth grade⁠—it was a little too advanced, even for the gifted class.  But we certainly heard about it, and learned about the hide and tallow trade, and took tests about parts of a ship, identifying the various types of sails and whatnot.  I decided that at some point, when I got a little older, I would read Two Years Before the Mast for myself⁠—and, once I had, visit the Pilgrim.

See, I didn’t stay aboard the Pilgrim with my classmates.  Every­one else went, but I had skipped some grades, and was deemed too young for an overnight field trip.  Recently I looked into trav­eling down to Dana Point and finally seeing the ship for myself.  To my surprise, it turned out that it was actually a replica⁠—the original ship had sunk in 1856.  I was still interested in seeing the replica, though.  In fact, it meant more to me than the original, for it was the replica I would have stayed on.  But I was just a little too late.  The replica sank in 2020.  March 29, to be precise⁠—perhaps due to missed maintenance during the first covid lock­down.  So that is one thing I won’t be able to cross off the ol’ bucket list.  But at least I can cross off reading this book.  It was archaic and full of mind-numbing nautical detail, but it was interesting to find the place where I grew up and have spent the significant majority of my life, the most populous state in the U.S. and the fifth-largest economy in the world, described as a place of limitless potential—

[…] a country embracing four or five hundred miles of sea-coast, with several good harbors; with fine forests in the north; the waters filled with fish, and the plains covered with thousands of herds of cattle; blessed with a climate, than which there can be no better in the world; free from all manner of diseases, whether epidemic or endemic; and with a soil in which corn yields from seventy to eighty fold. In the hands of an enterprising people, what a country this might be!

⁠—but potential so far almost entirely untapped, such that Dana’s memories of California consist only of “long days and longer nights passed on your desolate hill, watching piles of hides, hearing the sharp bark of your eternal coyotes, and the dismal hooting of your owls”.  This also has been one of the dark places of the earth.

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