Publisher's Synopsis
In 1869, my father, the late Richard Henry Dana, Jr., prepared a new edition of his ``Two Years Before the Mast'' with this preface: ``After twenty-eight years, the copyright of this book has reverted to me. In presenting the first `author's edition' to the public, I have been encouraged to add an account of a visit to the old scenes, made twenty-four years after, together with notices of the subsequent story and fate of the vessels, and of some of the persons with whom the reader is made acquainted.''
