Richard Henry Dana

Name: Two Years Before the Mast — Chapter VIII
Author: Richard Henry Dana

Two Years Before the Mast — Chapter VIII

Summary

“Two Years Before the Mast — Chapter VIII”, is a work by Richard Henry Dana. It explores elements such as sailors, forecastle and steerage.

Quotes from Two Years Before the Mast — Chapter VIII (Richard Henry Dana)

Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast — Chapter VIII

“ We now began to feel like sailors, which we never fully did when we were in the steerage. While there, however useful and active you may be, you are but a mongrel,—a sort of after-guard and “ship’s cousin.” You are immediately under the eye of the officers, cannot dance, sing, play, smoke, make a noise, or growl, (i.e. complain,) or take any other sailor’s pleasure; and you live with the steward, who is usually a go-between; and the crew never feel as though you were one of them. But if you live in the forecastle, you are ‘as independent as a wood-sawyer’s clerk,” (nautice,) and are a sailor. ”

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Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast — Chapter VIII

“ No man can be a sailor, or know what sailors are, unless he has lived in the forecastle with them—turned in and out with them, eaten of their dish and drank of their cup. After I had been a week there nothing would have tempted me to go back to my old berth, and never afterwards, even in the worst of weather,when in a close and leaking forecastle off Cape Horn, did I for a moment wish myself in the steerage. Another thing which you learn better in the forecastle than you can anywhere else, is to make and mend clothes, and this is indispensable to sailors. ”

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Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast — Chapter VIII

“ Between the tropics there is a sight haziness, like a thin gauze, drawn over the sun, which, without obstructing or obscuring the light, tempers the heat which comes down with perpendicular fierceness in the Atlantic and Indian tropics. ”

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Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast — Chapter VIII

“ But to return to the state of the crew. Upon our coming into the forecastle, there was some difficulty about the uniting of the allowances of bread, by which we thought we were to lose a few pounds. This set us into a ferment. The captain would not condescend to explain, and we went aft in a body, with a Swede, the oldest and best sailor of the crew, for spokesman. The recollection of the scene that followed always brings up a smile, especially the quarter-deck dignity and eloquence of the captain. ”

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Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast — Chapter VIII

“ The Pacific well deserves its name, for except in the southern part, at Cape Horn, and in the western parts, near the China and Indian oceans, it has few storms, and is never either extremely hot or cold. ”

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Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast — Chapter VIII

“ Tarring the stays is more difficult, and is done by an operation which the sailors call “riding down”. A long piece of rope—top-gallant-studding-sail halyards, or something of the kind—is taken up to the masthead from which the stay leads, and rove through a block for a girt-line, or, as the sailors usually call it, a gant-line; with the end of this a bowline is taken round the stay, into which the man gets with his bucket of tar and a bunch of oakum, and the other end being fast on deck, with some one to tend it, he is lowered down gradually, and tars the stay carefully as he goes. ”

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Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast — Chapter VIII

“ Jan. 14th, 1835, we came to anchor in the spacious bay of Santa Barbara, after a voyage of one hundred and fifty days from Boston.
Footnote ↑ Haze is a word of frequent use on board ship, and never, I believe, used elsewhere. It is very expressive to a sailor, and means to punish by hard work. Let an officer once say, “I’ll haze you,” and your fate is fixed. You will be “worked up,” if you are not a better man than he is. ”

Richard Henry Dana

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