Two Years Before the Mast

Based on Richard Henry Dana’s classic memoir, this 1984 one-shot from The Cassette Book Company adapts the harrowing true story of a young man’s two-year voyage around Cape Horn in the 1830s. Rendered in black-and-white line art by David Heames and Robert Hayward Webb, with a script by Ruth Roche, it captures the brutal reality of life before the mast. Though a single issue, it stands as a faithful, historically-minded graphic novel adaptation from the early days of the comic-book format.