Most stories of sailors are told from the perspectives of an officer. An officer’s voyage would greatly differ from those of a common Jack Tar. In Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana writes form his personal story as an able bodied seaman aboard the Alert. His goal was to dispel any romance about a life of a sailor by showing the “a mixture of a little good with much evil, and a little pleasure with much pain (41).” However, Dana demonstrated the benefits that fruited from the hard work of sailors, such as new sight, new friends, and experiencing new cultures. And even though these things come with a price, Dana made all his hard work sound worth while.