Richard Henry Dana

Richard Henry Dana (1815–1882) was an American lawyer and writer, the son of a Boston poet of the same name. When weak eyesight interrupted his studies at Harvard, he shipped as a common sailor to California in 1834 and described the voyage in Two Years Before the Mast, published in 1840, which exposed the conditions of the merchant seaman and gave an early picture of Mexican California. Returning to Harvard and the law, he specialized in maritime cases, wrote the handbook The Seaman's Friend, helped found the Free Soil Party, defended fugitive slaves in court and served as United States attorney for Massachusetts during the Civil War.