Two Years Before the Mast

by Richard Henry Dana

A selection of Mr. Dana's speeches, the most interesting historically or those of most present value, have been published, together with a biographical sketch,[3] supplementing the Life written by Charles Francis Adams.

Two years later, broken now in health, but with his mind vigorous, he resolved to give up the practice of law and devote himself to writing a work on international law. For this purpose, and as a measure of economy, he went to Europe, and for two years applied himself diligently to his plan for a book which he believed would give some fundamentally new views on international law. He had made many notes and had begun to write the first few chapters when he died, after a short illness, from pneumonia, in Rome, January 6, 1882. He was buried in the beautiful Protestant cemetery of that city.

His wife, who was Sarah Watson of Hartford, Conn., survived him, and he left five daughters and a son. There are now nine of his grandchildren living (four of them Dana grandsons), and also four great-grandchildren.

Finally, what did Mr. Dana accomplish for sailors? In the preface to the first edition (1840) he said, ``If it shall . . . call more attention to the welfare of seamen, or give any information as to their real condition which may serve to raise them in the rank of beings, and to promote in any measure their religious and moral improvement, and diminish the hardships of their daily life, the end of its publication will be answered.'' And after the flogging at San Pedro, there was his vow (page 1252), ``that, if God should ever give me the means, I would do something to redress the grievances and relieve the sufferings of that class of beings with whom my lot had so long been cast.'' For redressing individual grievances he took the part of the sailor in many a lawsuit where his remuneration was often next to nothing, and by which action he incurred the ill will of possible future rich and influential clients. In his journal December 14, 1847, he says, ``I often have a good deal to contend with in the slurs or open opposition of masters and owners of vessels whose seamen I undertake to defend or look after,'' though he adds there were honorable exceptions. These cases he fought hard and bravely, and into them he put his whole mind, heart and soul. He could not have done better in them if he had been paid the highest fees known to the Bar. He settled as many of these cases out of court as he could. He believed any reasonable settlement better for the sailor than a legal contest, though his own fees would be less. Beside taking the part of the individual seamen, he published the ``Seamen's Friend,'' a book giving the full legal rights of sailors as well as their duties, a set of definitions of sea terms, which to this day is quoted in all the dictionaries, and much information for the use of beginners. He drew up a petition and prepared an accompanying leaflet addressed to Congress for ``The More Speedy Trial of Seamen.'' He wrote numerous articles for the press and delivered many addresses on behalf of seamen, or for institutions for their benefit such as ``Father'' Taylor's Bethel and for a more cordial reception of sailors in the church. He wrote the introduction of Leech's ``A Voice from the Main Deck,'' but above all it was the indirect influence of his ``Two Years Before the Mast'' which did the most to relieve their hardships.

While on a trip in Europe in 1875-76, I spent some weeks in London and visited Parliament frequently to study the proceedings and see and hear its leading men. By a strange coincidence at my very first visit, made at the invitation of the late Sir William Vernon Harcourt, after I had sent in my card and was ushered into the inner lobby, I saw a man, evidently a member, rushing out into this lobby, and, to quote from my journal written at the time, ``in a wild state of excitement, throwing about his arms and shaking his fists, with short ejaculations such as `I'll expose the villains, all of them,' and I heard the words `Cheats!' and I think `Liars!''' This was a strange introduction to the then decorous British House of Commons, for this was before the active days of Parnell. I saw poor, blind Henry Fawcett[4] and others trying to calm the man. The lobby was immediately cleared of strangers, so I saw no more just then, but I was later admitted into the House and learned that this man was the famous Plimsoll (1824-1898). He had become enraged because his Merchants' Shipping Bill had just been thrown out by Disraeli, then Prime Minister, on this day of the so-called ``Slaughter of the Innocents,'' that is, the day when the Government abandoned all bills which they were not to carry out that session. Justin McCarthy, in his ``History of Our Own Times'' (Vol. IV, page 24, et seq.), gives a full account of this scene. Plimsoll's Bill was a measure for the protection of seamen against the danger of being sent to sea in vessels unfit for the voyage. To understand the whole situation of the sailor in civilized countries, one must know that the only way allowed by law or custom for him to get employment is to sign articles sometimes without even knowing the name of the vessel, and almost always without an opportunity to examine or even see her. Once having signed these papers, sailors are by law compelled to keep their contracts and can be imprisoned and sent aboard if they try to escape. Every other person in every other kind of employment, since the abolition of slavery, signing similar papers has a right to refuse to carry out his agreement, with no other penalty than a suit for damages. He cannot be forced to carry out the contract in person. If this were not so, there would be a sort of contract peonage or slavery endorsed by the law. It is otherwise, however, with the sailors. The United States Supreme Court in the case of Robertson v. Baldwin (165 U.S. 275, 1896) decided, Judge Harlan dissenting, that notwithstanding the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution which, it was supposed, had prohibited involuntary servitude except as punishment for crime, sailors could be forced on board of vessels, and the facts that the vessel was unfit for living, the food bad, and the master brutal were no defences. The headnote of the case says, ``The contract of a sailor has always been treated as an exceptional one involving to a certain extent the surrender of his personal liberty during the life of his contract.'' Mr. Plimsoll was rightly convinced that unseaworthy vessels left port for the sake of insurance money on valued policies, that the lives of the seamen were thereby imperilled, and that the poor sailor had no redress before the law. The bill that had just been thrown out by Disraeli provided that if one-quarter of the seamen appealed on the ground of unseaworthiness a survey would be ordered, the vessel detained till the survey was made, and if she were unseaworthy or improperly provisioned the sailors would be relieved from their contract unless those defects were cured. It also had other minor provisions for the benefit of the sailors. In Parliament that night, it was thought that Plimsoll's wild conduct had destroyed his reputation as a sane man and had ruined the chances of ever passing his bill, but outside of Parliament the effect was just the reverse. The public was aroused to a full understanding of the essential merits of his bill and the government was forced to put it on the calendar and carry it through that session in its substantial features, and the following year (1876) a more complete and perfected act covering the same points was passed.

In the United States, a most interesting character, Andrew Furuseth, a Norwegian, himself a sailor, and without much education but a man of wonderful force, has succeeded, largely by the aid of labor unions, in forcing through Congress bills by which no American seaman can any longer be forced against his will into this servitude nor any foreign seaman on domestic voyages. Another evil tending to degrade and enslave the sailor was the allowance made by law of three months' advance wages on beginning a voyage. This apparently harmless and, to the credulous and inexperienced legislator, beneficial provision gave a chance to the sailors' boarding-house keeper and runner, or ``crimp,'' as he or she is called, to ``shanghai'' seamen and put them aboard drunk or drugged, with little or no clothing but what they had on their backs and rob them of this advance money. The ``crimps''' share of this money in San Francisco alone has been calculated at one million dollars a year, or equal to eighty per cent of the seamen's entire wages. Part of this had to be shared with corrupt police and politicians and some of it has been traced to sources ``higher up.'' So common was this practice that vessels sailing from San Francisco and New York had so few sober sailors aboard, that it was customary to take longshoremen to set sail, heave anchor and get the ship under way, and then send them back by tug. This is precisely what happened on the well-equipped and new ship on which I sailed from New York in 1879 for California, and the same situation is described by Captain Arthur H. Clark in his account of seamen in his ``Clipper Ship Era.'' These poor sailors, without proper clothing, had to draw on the ship's ``slop chest'' for necessary oilskins, thick jackets, mittens and the like, and used up almost all the rest of their wages. The small balance was wasted or stolen, or both, at the port of arrival, and off they were shipped again by the ``crimp'' with no chance to save or improve their condition. After years of agitation by the friends of sailors the advance pay is now wholly abolished in the coastwise trade in America and the three months' advance cut down to one in the foreign trade, immensely to the benefit of the sailor and the discouragement of the ``crimp.'' The argument that without this system of bondage and ``crimpage'' it would be impossible to secure crews is fully answered by the experience of Great Britain since the passage of the Plimsoll Acts and in the United States since the recent acts of Congress. On the contrary, these measures tend to secure a better class of sailors and compel improvement of the conditions under which they do their work. I was told when in England that Plimsoll, who himself was not a sailor, was influenced among other things by my father's book ``Two Years Before the Mast.''

THE END

[1] He was Richard Henry Dana, Jr., when he wrote his book, and continued to be called so through life, for his father, a poet and littérateur, lived to the age of ninety-two, and died but three years before his son.

[2] Richard Henry Dana, Jr. A Biography. By Charles Francis Adams. In two volumes. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin Company.

[3] Speeches in Stirring Times and Letters to a Son. Richard H. Dana, Jr. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin Company, 1910.