3 of 3

Write now Article Tools

Page 3 of 5

aft. The entire world was one huge roaring and pounding, and the ship was more under water than above. I stood there for two hours, looking in a state of ecstasy at the fulfillment of my dream. Two hours may not sound like much, but I shall never forget them, and in four years they were the only good thing that I could hold on to.

During this storm a depth charge came loose on the fantail. Depth charges can only explode when their fuses are lit, but they are, after all, a substantial piece of metal. This one flew back and fourth across the deck, and wiped out everything in its path. It flattened most of the superstructure in that area, until two sailors tied to ropes caught it and threw it over the side. A huge acetylene bottle broke loose on the bow and did the same thing there. We discovered that one of the seams of the port bulkhead in the forward fire room had burst, and we were taking water through the crack. The ship had begun to break up, when finally, south of the Bermudas, the storm abated enough for us to take on fuel. We limped back to Norfolk and went into dry-dock for six months. We heard later that the Wasp had lost sixty feet of her flight deck.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. sailed on the Pilgrim, a small hide brigantine with a small crew. Had she encountered such a storm as Donna, I seriously doubt that she would have survived. I may be wrong, of course, never having sailed on a small hide brig under a captain who was able to take charge of a wind-jammer. Dana, being a student at Harvard, did not have to go as a common sailor before the mast, but he had the same wild, romantic longing and a total willingness to invest himself in almost any adventure. The pretext came in the summer of 1833 when an attack of measles left his eyes too weak for study, and he shipped out as an ordinary seaman bound for California, rounding Cape Horn in November, 1834. To do this, one has to cross the equator, of course, and as they ran in towards the coast, they found that they "were directly off the port of Pernambuco." The name of this town echoed down my childhood and my greatest longing. Unbelievably, I finally ran into that harbor, now called Recife. I remember walking through the sandy streets, and nodding to the prostitutes who stood in almost every doorway. I was in the company of a few ruffians, and we wound up in a large bar and dancehall. A lovely woman attached herself to me, and we danced for two hours under the crimson ceiling. Being of a religious bent,

• << previous page
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about Book reviews: Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana Jr.?
We want to hear your view. Write now!