This is the story of Richard Dana's two years aboard a merchant ship starting in1834. Dana comes upon the coast of California where the brig is collecting cattle hides for trade back in the "United States" - this was when California was actually a Mexican province.
The descriptions of the small pueblos on the beach, and San Diego "not more than half as large as Monterey", and "nothing for miles which could be called a tree", is wonderful to imagine; as was the number of "Sandwich Islanders", as he called Hawaiians, in the trade with California, and their deep camaraderie and pleasant attitudes.
Dana describes more than one passage past Point Conception as demanding and exhilarating, and I can compare to my own travels along that coastline; and though he makes little reference of the Channel Islands, where I'm currently traveling, there is an indirectnoteworthy, yet indirect connection:
Smuggler's Cove, in the east end of Santa Cruz Island, right next to Yellowbanks - where I stood shelter from a gale - is famous for merchant ships doing contraband with goods, so as to avoid the tariffs imposed by the officials in Monterey. Here ships unloaded their illegal goods into ships that had been "cleared" by customs.
His being a Harvard student, which is as far from being a sailor as is possible, Dana has great insight into the affairs of sailorly-life aboard a merchant ship: the morale of the crew, the grueling work on deck and on shore, and the behavior of the captain.
In contrast to the situation of the modern sailor, the life of the merchant sailor was "a dog's life"; though we are attracted to the sea for the same reasons, the modern vessel affords an individual the freedom that in the past was simply impossible - even to a captain in a merchant ship, in his "supremacy" and all.
Not to say modern sailors don't get their share of discomfort, for that's just part of life at sea; personally, I just have renewed appreciation for the level of complete freedom that we get to enjoy.
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