In 1834, a young man, recently of Harvard, signed on as a common seaman aboard the brig Pilgrim for the perilous voyage around Cape Horn to California. During the next two years he recorded the singular joys and incredible hardships of a sailor's life in a daily journal that endures as one of the most vivid recreations of life at sea ever published. Conceived as a protest against brutal injustice, written to improve the sailor's working conditions, Two Years Before the Mast is a powerful portrayal of the testing of man's courage and endurance.