Two Years Before the Mast, Chapter 15: A Flogging, etc.

Like the earlier chapter cited about sailing around Cape Horn, the scene in which the captain of Richard Henry Dana's ship flogs a sailor is a powerful evocation of the life of seamen at the time. Perhaps 40 years had passed between the time in which Benito Cereno is set and the time Dana, Jr. sailed for California, but little about the conditions of a sailor's life had changed. The captain was indeed an absolute dictator aboard his ship. Although Dana himself grew more conservative later in his life, this powerful expose actually did help seamen gain some basic protections.