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.

There may be in some parts a good deal that is unintelligible to
the general reader; but I have found from my own experience, and
from what I have heard from others, that plain matters of fact in
relation to customs and habits of life new to us, and descriptions
of life under new aspects, act upon the inexperienced through the
imagination, so that we are hardly aware of our want of technical
knowledge. Thousands read the escape of the American frigate
through the British channel, and the chase and wreck of the Bristol
trader in the Red Rover, and follow the minute nautical manoeuvres
with breathless interest, who do not know the name of a rope in the
ship; and perhaps with none the less admiration and enthusiasm for
their want of acquaintance with the professional detail.