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Biography
Dana was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on August 1, 1815,[1] into a family that first settled in colonial America in 1640, counting Anne Bradstreet among their ancestors.[2] As a boy, Dana studied in Cambridgeport under a strict schoolmaster named Samuel Barrett, alongside fellow Cambridge native and future writer James Russell Lowell.[3] Barrett was infamous as a disciplinarian, punishing his students for any infraction by flogging. He also often pulled students by their ears and, on one such occasion, nearly pulled Dana's ear off, causing his father to protest enough that the practice was abolished.[4]
In 1825, Dana enrolled in a private school overseen by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who Dana later mildly praised as "a very pleasant instructor", though he lacked a "system or discipline enough to insure regular and vigorous study".[4] In July 1831, Dana began his studies at Harvard College, though he was suspended for six months before the end of his first year for supporting a student protest.[5] In his junior year, he had a case of measles which also caused ophthalmia and his weakening vision inspired him to take a sea voyage.[5]
Rather than going on a Grand Tour of Europe, he decided to enlist as a common sailor, despite his high-class birth. He left Boston on the brig Pilgrim on August 14, 1834,[6] on a voyage around Cape Horn to the then-remote California, at that time still a part of Mexico. On the 180-ton, 86.5 feet (26.4 m)-long Pilgrim, Dana visited a number of settlements in California (including Monterey, San Pedro, San Juan Capistrano, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Santa Clara), and San Francisco. He returned to Massachusetts aboard the ship Alert on September 22, 1836, after two years away from home.[7]
He kept a diary, and after the trip wrote Two Years Before the Mast based on his experiences. The term "before the mast" refers to sailor's quarters -- in the forecastle, in the bow of the ship, the officers dwelling near the stern. His writing evidences his later social feeling for the oppressed. After witnessing a flogging on board the Pilgrim, he vowed that he would try to help improve the lot of the common seaman.
After his sea voyage, he returned to Harvard to take up study at its law school, completing his education in 1837. He subsequently became a lawyer, and an expert on maritime law, many times defending common seamen, and wrote The Seaman's Friend, which became a standard reference text on the legal rights and responsibilities of sailors.
In 1853 he represented William T.G. Morton in Morton's attempt to establish that he discovered the "Anaesthetic Properties of Ether".[8]
Later he became a prominent abolitionist, helping to found the anti-slavery Free Soil Party in 1848 and representing the slave Anthony Burns in Boston in 1854. In 1859 Dana visited Cuba while its annexation was being debated in the U.S. Senate. He visited Havana, a sugar plantation, a bullfight, and various churches, hospitals, schools, and prisons, a trip documented in his book To Cuba and Back.
During the American Civil War, Dana served as an United States Attorney, and successfully argued before the Supreme Court that the United States Government could rightfully blockade Confederate ports. From 1867–1868 Dana was a member of the Massachusetts legislature, and also served as a U.S. counsel in the trial of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. In 1876, his nomination as ambassador to Great Britain was defeated in the Senate by political enemies, partly because of a lawsuit for plagiarism brought against him for a legal textbook he had edited.
Dana died of influenza in Rome, and is buried in that city's Protestant Cemetery.
His son, Richard Henry Dana III, married Edith Longfellow, daughter of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.[9]
Namesakes
- The point and city of Dana Point, California, located on the Pacific coast about halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego, are named for him.
- Several Schools are named in his honor:
Selected works
- Two Years Before the Mast, 1840; 1869 revision by Dana; 1911 revision by his son
- The Seaman's Friend: Containing a Treatise on Practical Seamanship, with Plates; A Dictionary of Sea Terms; Customs and Usages of the Merchant Service; Laws Relating to the Practical Duties of Master and Mariners, 1841
- Cruelty to seamen: being the case of Nichols & Couch [date unknown]
- An autobiographical sketch, 1815-1842
- To Cuba and back, 1859
- Journal of a Voyage Round the World, 1859-1860
- Twenty-Four Years After, 1869; now generally included in Two Years Before the Mast
- The journal, Robert F. Lucid, editor. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1968
Published as
- Two Years Before the Mast & Other Voyages: Two Years Before the Mast, To Cuba and Back, Journal of a Voyage Round the World, 1859-1860 (Thomas L. Philbrick, ed.) (Library of America, 2005) ISBN 978-1-93108283-9.
References
- ^ Nelson, Randy F. The Almanac of American Letters. Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1981: 45. ISBN 086576008X
- ^ Sullivan, Wilson. New England Men of Letters. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1972: 98. ISBN 0027886808
- ^ Duberman, Martin. James Russell Lowell. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1966: 15.
- ^ a b Sullivan, Wilson. New England Men of Letters. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1972: 100. ISBN 0027886808
- ^ a b Sullivan, Wilson. New England Men of Letters. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1972: 101. ISBN 0027886808
- ^ Sullivan, Wilson. New England Men of Letters. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1972: 102. ISBN 0027886808
- ^ Sullivan, Wilson. New England Men of Letters. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1972: 104–105. ISBN 0027886808
- ^ Morton, William T.G. Statements, Supported by Evidence, of Wm. T.G. Morton on His Claim to the Discovery of the Anaesthetic Properties of Ether Submitted to the Honorable the Select Committee Appointed by the Senate of the United States: 32d Congress, 2d Session. Washington, D.C., January 21, 1853: 222, 232.
- ^ Nelson, Randy F. The Almanac of American Letters. Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1981: 63. ISBN 086576008X
- ^ Website of Dana MS in Hawthorne
- ^ Website of Dana MS in San Pedro
External links
