Two Years Before the Mast

Charles the dissolute, hedonistic son of wealthy shipping owner, Gordon Stewart, is press-ganged into service aboard one of his father's ships, 'The Pilgrim', after a fight in a bar. Proud and aloof initially, Charles is soon ostracized by his fellow shipmates. However, as the voyage continues, Charles experiences the desperate privations suffered by the crew and witnesses the wanton brutality handed down by the Draconian ship's master Captain Francis Thompson, and he starts to identify with the crew. Befriended by the novelist Richard Henry Dana, working undercover to discover what happened to his brother on the Pilgrim's previous voyage, Charles eventually becomes part of the crew. Together the two men keep the crew in line in the face of ever-decreasing rations, an outbreak of scurvy and vicious punishments exacted with great zeal by the ship's first mate, Amazeen. Starving and pushed well beyond breaking point, the crew mutinies and kills the Captain. Returning to port, armed with Dana's novel, fearing they could be hanged the crew throw themselves on the mercy of the U.S. Senate to highlight the plight of sailors on merchant ships at sea in the hope of effecting changes.