Right now I am reading Two Years Before the Mast. It was written in the 1830s by Richard Henry Dana., a Harvard student who took time off from college to go to sea, hoping it would help his eyesight after a bout of the measles adversely affected it. He is hired on to a merchant brig sailing to California to trade for cow hides. I'm a little over half way through it and it is a really interesting glimpse into the life of a merchant sailor and California in the 1830s. .