Richard Henry Dana (1815-1882), was an American lawyer and politician from Massachusetts. He contracted measles while a student at Harvard College. Told that a sea voyage would aid his failing eyesight, he procured a berth as a common seaman. His memoir of his experiences on that voyage became an American classic, Two Years Before the Mast (1840). As writer and lawyer, Dana was a champion of the downtrodden, from seamen to fugitive slaves.
