With [ integrity] exception, . . . all the books professing to hold back life at sea have been written by persons who have gained their fuck off as naval officers, or passengers and of these, there are truly few which are intended to be taken as narratives of facts. . . . thither has non been a book written, professing to give [the] life and experience [of putting surface seamen], by one who has been one of them, and can know what their life real is. A function from the forecastle has hardly yet been heard (Dana 37-38).
Dana goes to not completely to portray in vivid detail the life of the common sailor for the first time, he also showed how that life was in reality far from the romantic, carefree experience the public had introductory believed it to be. He declares that he means to "present the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is---the light and the dark together" (38).
However, it is the "dark" which stands out in the reader's mind, particularly if that reader---in the 1830s or 1990s---picked or picks up this book expecting to go out a romantic adventure on the sea.
One of the reasons for the victory of the book in its time, and its longevity as an admired work, is the nontextual matter of the provide. This is not merely a muckraking work which moldiness depend on the horrors it digs up for its interest and power. To
Also important to the effectiveness of the book is the development of Dana as a character and as a sailor. The reader unfamiliar with the sea and sailing quickly identifies with the author:
the contrary, Dana is a fine writer whose compelling and clear style reflects the vitality of the sea. His straightforward but detailed narrative is suddenly designed to show the lives of common sailors in their day-to-day grind. Finally, Dana clearly comes to cognise not only the sea and the ship on which he sails, but most importantly the common sailors with whom he works and lives under a tremendous variety of conditions. This love for his subject translates into a work of art whose sweep and power the reader cannot resist.
Not only has Dana shown what the life of a sailor is really like, he has humanized these men and drawn out the perplexity and compassion of the reader toward them.
My little knowledge of a vas was all at fault. Unintelligible orders were so rapidly give and so immediately executed, there was such a upper about, and such an intermingling of strange cries and stranger actions, that I was completely bewildered. There is not so helpless and pitiable an object in the world as a landsman beginning a sailor's life (Dana 42).
He was going aloft to fit a strap around the main top-mast-head, for ringtail halyards, and had the strap and block, a coil of halyards, and a marlin-spike about his neck. He fell from the channelise futtock shrouds, and not knowing how to swim, and being heavily dressed, with all those things around his neck, he probably sank immediately (Dana 76).
Superstition runs rampant among sailors. A story is told about how once, when the wind was down for a lengthy period of time, a Fin was suspected of being trusty because "Fins are wizards." To make the Fin start the wind up again and take his curse off the ship for not getting his way with respect to some minor matter, the senior pilot locked the Fin up and starved him unt
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