"Jacob Hazen also offered a gripping expose of the cruelty of maritime officers in his 1854 memoir...Five Years Before the Mast...saw many of his shipmates flogged...experienced the lash himself." - Jack Tar's Story, The Autobiographies and Memoirs of Sailors in Antebellum America (2010)
"Hazen found the work of hunting whales incessant and viewed service on an American ship as an absolute prison." -To Swear Like a Sailor, Maritime Culture in America, 1750-1850
"Five Years Before the Mast by...Jacob A. Hazen...is quite a popular book...its descriptions bring what the writer saw so vividly to the reader's eye." -Now and Then (1868)
"Jacob A. Hazen...died on Monday...was the author of...'Five Years Before the Mast,' which went through 20 editions."-Miners Journal (Pottsville, Pa.), June 8, 1899
Jacob Hazen's "Five Years Before the Mast." describing his adventures on the sea with the navy and on a whale-ship, was first printed in 1854, and was so popular with the reading public that it was then was reprinted in 1856 and 1860, with numerous additional reprints in the late 19th century.
The original articles forming a portion of the material out of which this volume is compiled, were partly drawn up by the writer during the year 1842, shortly after obtaining his discharge from the navy.
In describing his thought process for going to sea, Hazen reflects that:
"Whenever I made up my mind to go to a new place, I was up and off at once, without pausing to reason upon the advantages or disadvantages likely to result from the journey. I had now made up my mind to go to sea, and go to sea I would, Crusoe like, without any other object in view than the vague idea of hitting on some plan to make a fortune."
Part of the book covers his time on a whaling ship and the other portion covers his time in the Navy.
He was not prepared for all that awaited him on a life at sea, including as he describes the strict discipline imposed:
"The captain seized his sword, as if his whole soul was fired with a sudden stream of electricity, and slinging the scabbard half way across the deck, to the great danger of a midshipman's head that hovered in its line of transit, struck the naked steel over the capstan with a clang that threatened to knock everything into flinders. 'Who is this hardy villain that dares to lift his voice against my authority?' cried he, jumping up and down in his fury. 'Let me see the face of the rascal that dares tell me he won't scrub his hammock. Show him to me -point him out, that I may carve my way through his mutinous heart! Come back here you worthless galley-slaves, till I cut the head from every lubber who dares to tell my order to go to the devil.'"
After escaping being pressed into service in Brazil, by Brazilians, Hazen joined the U.S. Navy.
About the author:
After experiencing the adventures related in Five Years Before the Mast, Jacob A. Hazen moved to Indiana and became the General Agent of the Lycoming Fire Insurance Co. He died in June 1899.
