These are called "shrouds".
TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST
PREFACE
I am unwilling to present this narrative to the public without a
few words in explanation of my reasons for publishing it. Since
Mr. Cooper's Pilot and Red Rover, there have been so many stories
of sea-life written, that I should really think it unjustifiable
in me to add one to the number without being able to give reasons
in some measure warranting me in so doing.
With the single exception, as I am quite confident, of Mr. Ames's
entertaining, but hasty and desultory work, called "Mariner's Sketches,"
all the books professing to give life at sea have been written by persons
who have gained their experience as naval officers, or passengers,
and of these, there are very few which are intended to be taken as
narratives of facts.
Now, in the first place, the whole course of life, and daily duties,
the discipline, habits and customs of a man-of-war are very different
from those of the merchant service; and in the next place, however
entertaining and well written these books may be, and however accurately
they may give sea-life as it appears to their authors, it must still be
plain to every one that a naval officer, who goes to sea as a gentleman,
"with his gloves on," (as the phrase is,) and who associated only with
his fellow-officers, and hardly speaks to a sailor except through a
boatswain's mate, must take a very different view of the whole matter
from that which would be taken by a common sailor.
Besides the interest which every one must feel in exhibitions of
life in those forms in which he himself has never experienced it;
there has been, of late years, a great deal of attention directed
toward common seamen, and a strong sympathy awakened in their behalf.
Yet I believe that, with the single exception which I have mentioned,
there has not been a book written, professing to give their life and
experiences, by one who has been of them, and can know what their
life really is. A voice from the forecastle has hardly yet been
heard.
In the following pages I design to give an accurate and authentic
narrative of a little more than two years spent as a common sailor,
before the mast, in the American merchant service. It is written
out from a journal which I kept at the time, and from notes which
I made of most of the events as they happened; and in it I have
adhered closely to fact in every particular, and endeavored to give
each thing its true character. In so doing, I have been obliged
occasionally to use strong and coarse expressions, and in some
instances to give scenes which may be painful to nice feelings;
but I have very carefully avoided doing so, whenever I have not
felt them essential to giving the true character of a scene.
My design is, and it is this which has induced me to publish the
book, to present the life of a common sailor at sea as it really
is, - the light and the dark together.
