Two Years Before the Mast
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Narrated by:
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Kirby Heyborne
About this listen
Two Years Before the Mast is a book by the American author Richard Henry Dana, Jr., written after a two-year sea voyage starting in 1834 and published in 1840.
While at Harvard College, Dana had an attack of the measles that affected his vision. Thinking it might help his sight, Dana, rather than going on a Grand Tour as most of his fellow classmates traditionally did (and unable to afford it anyway), and being something of a nonconformist, he left Harvard to enlist as a common sailor on a voyage around Cape Horn on the brig Pilgrim. He returned to Massachusetts two years later aboard the Alert (which left California sooner than the Pilgrim). He kept a diary throughout the voyage, and, after returning, he wrote a book based on his experiences.
Recognized as an American classic, Two Years Before the Mast was published the same year that Dana was admitted to the bar.
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- Unabridged
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The small ship making the Liverpool-to-New York trip in the early months of 1856 carried mail, crates of dry goods, and more than 100 passengers, mostly Irish emigrants. Suddenly, an iceberg tore the ship asunder, and five lifeboats were lowered. As four lifeboats drifted into the fog and icy water, never to be heard from again, the last boat wrenched away from the sinking ship with a few blankets, some water and biscuits, and 13 souls. Only one would survive. This is his story.
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Engrossing
- By Trish on 04-20-22
By: Brian Murphy, and others
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Mutiny on the Bounty
- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: Michael Carman
- Length: 22 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The mutiny on HMS Bounty, in the South Pacific on 28 April 1789, is one of history's truly great stories - a tale of human drama, intrigue and adventure of the highest order - and in the hands of Peter FitzSimons it comes to life as never before. Commissioned by the Royal Navy to collect breadfruit plants from Tahiti and take them to the West Indies, the Bounty's crew found themselves in a tropical paradise. Five months later, they did not want to leave.
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You don't know the whole story.
- By Justin Sluyter on 05-01-19
By: Peter FitzSimons
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Last Flag Down
- The Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship
- By: John Baldwin, Ron Powers
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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As the Confederacy felt itself slipping beneath the Union juggernaut in late 1864, the South launched a desperate counteroffensive to force a standoff. Its secret weapon? A state-of-the-art raiding ship whose mission was to sink the U.S. merchant fleet. The raider's name was Shenandoah, and her executive officer was Conway Whittle, a 24-year-old warrior.
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Good all around
- By Rob on 01-19-08
By: John Baldwin, and others
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A Voyage for Madmen
- By: Peter Nichols
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1968, nine sailors set off on the most daring race ever held: to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe nonstop. It was a feat that had never been accomplished and one that would forever change the face of sailing. Ten months later, only one of the nine men would cross the finish line and earn fame, wealth, and glory. For the others, the reward was madness, failure, and death. In this extraordinary book, Peter Nichols chronicles a contest of the individual against the sea, waged at a time before cell phones and electronic positioning systems.
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Not Awesome
- By Shaun G. on 04-23-19
By: Peter Nichols
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In the Heart of the Sea
- The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
- By: Nathaniel Philbrick
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the nineteenth century as the sinking of the Titanic was in the twentieth. In 1819 the Essex left Nantucket for the South Pacific with 20 crew members aboard. In the middle of the South Pacific the ship was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale. The crew drifted for more than 90 days in three tiny whaleboats, succumbing to weather, hunger, and disease and ultimately turning to drastic measures in the fight for survival.
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Audio must have been fixed
- By Amazon Customer on 02-11-18
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Sea of Glory
- America's Voyage of Discovery, the U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842
- By: Nathaniel Philbrick
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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America's first frontier was not the West; it was the sea, and no one writes more eloquently about that watery wilderness than Nathaniel Philbrick. In his best-selling In the Heart of the Sea, Philbrick probed the nightmarish dangers of the vast Pacific. Now, in an epic sea adventure, he writes about one of the most ambitious voyages of discovery the Western world has ever seen - the US Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842.
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A good solid voyage of discovery
- By Ken Sundermeyer on 06-18-05
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Farther Than Any Man
- The Rise and Fall of Captain James Cook
- By: Martin Dugard
- Narrated by: Jack Chekijian
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In the annals of seafaring and exploration, there is one name that immediately evokes visions of the open ocean, billowing sails, visiting strange, exotic lands previously uncharted, and civilizations never before encountered - Captain James Cook. Full of realistic action, lush descriptions of places and events, and fascinating historical characters such as King George III and the soon-to-be-notorious Master William Bligh, Dugard's gripping account of the life and death of Captain James Cook is a thrilling story of a discoverer hell-bent on going farther than any man.
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Sloppy History
- By Kyle P. Dalton on 04-06-18
By: Martin Dugard
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Hell on Ice
- The Saga of the Jeannette
- By: Edward Ellsberg
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 1870s, newspaperman James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald drummed up excitement and publicity for his paper through highly publicized missions of exploration. In 1879, Bennett's idea for a voyage was his most audacious to date: the North Pole. To do this, he hired a team of naval veterans in addition to a smattering of civilians with specialized knowledge in meteorology, whaling, and naturalism. The men on board the Jeannette set off in September of 1879. This would be the last time anyone saw them for two years.
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Great story, and great way to approach the telling
- By Christopher on 08-22-14
By: Edward Ellsberg
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Erebus
- One Ship, Two Epic Voyages, and the Greatest Naval Mystery of All Time
- By: Michael Palin
- Narrated by: Michael Palin
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Michael Palin brings the fascinating story of the Erebus and its occupants to life, from its construction as a bomb vessel in 1826 through the flagship years of James Clark Ross’s Antarctic expedition and finally to Sir John Franklin’s quest for the holy grail of navigation - a route through the Northwest Passage, where the ship disappeared into the depths of the sea for more than 150 years. It was rediscovered under the arctic waters in 2014.
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Engrossing story
- By Anonymous User on 10-01-24
By: Michael Palin
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Captain James Cook
- By: Rob Mundle
- Narrated by: Paul English
- Length: 15 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Captain James Cook is one of the greatest maritime explorers of all time. Over three remarkable voyages of discovery into the Pacific in the latter part of the 18th century, Cook unravelled the oldest mystery surrounding the existence of Terra Australis Incognita - the Great South Land. He became the first explorer to circumnavigate New Zealand and establish that it was two main islands; discover the Hawaiian Islands for the British Empire; and left an enduring legacy.
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High school history text?
- By peter on 08-31-22
By: Rob Mundle
What listeners say about Two Years Before the Mast
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- ALABRADY
- 10-29-21
Great story and narrator
The storytelling was easy to listen to and the narrator used their voice inflection with perfect timing. I think any young middle schooler who attends Dana middle school in Point Loma, San Diego should read this to provide a wonderful accounting to what went on nearby so many years ago on what is now known as Kellogg beach.
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- james williamson
- 07-14-22
Excellent story
This is a great story of sailing and the sailors lot back in the 1800’s.
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- Jeffery Rebitzke
- 07-21-22
Great reader and ok story
Fairly interesting account of being a merchant sailor in 1830 and a detail of early CA. The author ended up seeming pretty pompous in the end, but the reader was terrific.
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- D. Bollwinkel
- 03-06-22
A nautical and historical classic
I really enjoyed this story of the lives of sailors in the 1800s. It's easy to think our work is hard until one hears and imagines the incredibly difficult lives of sailors in this time period. I love his description of the beauty he experienced as a sailor and of California in the early days of the forming of the US.
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- Mark D.
- 12-16-21
fantastic book
I don't care what anyone says negative about this it was riveting and I left me wanting more
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- SquareTop
- 04-06-22
Voice not appealing to me...
A compelling, fascinating true account, made possible by a Man in whom had the foresight to record this epic story...
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- Oliver Fleener
- 06-19-24
Great Story
I wished I lived in SoCal back then. It’s not the same now. Too many people, the opposite of wild.
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- Brian T. McGill
- 01-07-16
Very well read
A great story and a great performance. Reader's pronunciation of ship terms, like forecastle, shows expertise.
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- Mel Johansson
- 04-24-16
Great book; needs a better narrator
I love Two Years Before the Mast--it's a fascinating historical account of the real way that merchant sailors lived. The thing that bothered me about the narration is that the reader doesn't know how to pronounce many of the nautical terms--foresail mainsail, leeward--which is essential to an effective reading of this book.
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- seaduck
- 06-29-21
A wonderful surprise
I have been telling everyone who will listen how much I loved this audiobook.
Two Years is one of those classics I never got around to reading. It is exactly the sort of book that benefits from a first-rate narrator who makes the listening experience perhaps even better than the reading experience. And that's saying a lot for a masterwork that was a bestseller in its time. There are, predictably, some sections that get caught up in the arcana of ship rigging. But Heyborne's voice and acting skill somehow power through them as he conveys the larger emotional experience (e.g. the terror of a storm) and pulls the listener along.
On a whim, I tried a sample by another narrator with a dreadful, pompous, uninflected English accent. Incredibly off-putting. I then happened to click on a sample of Heyborne's narration. His voice is appealing -- an energetic, animated young American, perhaps close to the age of Dana himself when he wrote his masterpiece, who clearly has acting talent. Dana was a Harvard student from a prominent Boston family when he developed vision issues, and determined that a couple of years at sea ("before the mast" meant as an ordinary working sailor) might ease his malady. Amazingly, it worked. He left Boston in 1834 on a voyage around Cape Horn to the California coast, where his ship was involved in the cattle hide trade.
The book is an extraordinary window into the maritime trade and the experience of the sailors themselves (as opposed to captains and shipowners). An unexpected bonus was the epilogue -- the last few chapters recounting Dana's return 25 years later to the same coast. In just over two decades, the relatively barren California coast had exploded, due to the Gold Rush. San Francisco was a thriving city of 150,000. Steam ships connected coastal towns in 2 hours, as opposed to 2 days. Astonishing.
If the subject matter is of any interest, give it a shot! Hats off to Kirby Heyborne.
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