Five Years Before the Mast

"Jacob Hazen also offered a gripping exposé 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...J