This book is the account of the author’s life as a common sailor between 1834 and 1836. Dana was a Harvard undergraduate and decided to “go before the mast” and experience life at sea. The book has been described as one of American literature’s classics. The author’s plan for his book was to “give an accurate and authentic narrative of a little more than two years spent as a common sailor, before the mast, in the American merchant service. It is written out from a journal which I kept at the time, and from notes which I made of most of the events as they happened; and in it I have adhered closely to fact in every particular, and endeavored to give each thing its true character.”