He also often pulled students by their ears and, on one such occasion, nearly pulled Dana's ear off, causing his father to protest enough that the practice was abolished. Barrett was infamous as a disciplinarian, punishing his students for any infraction by flogging. As a boy, Dana studied in Cambridgeport under a strict schoolmaster named Samuel Barrett, alongside fellow Cambridge native and future writer James Russell Lowell. All hands remained on deck throughout the day, and we got our fire-arms in order but we were too few to have done anything with her, if she had proved to be what we feared.Dana was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on August 1, 1815, into a family that first settled in colonial America in 1640. Early in the morning she was overhauling us a little, but after the rain came on and the wind grew lighter, we began to leave her astern. The wind was light, and we spread more canvas than she did, having royals and sky-sails fore and aft, and ten studding-sails while she, being an hermaphrodite brig, had only a gaff topsail aft.
We continued running dead before the wind, knowing that we sailed better so, and that clippers are fastest on the wind.
The captain, who watched her with his glass, said that she was armed, and full of men, and showed no colors.
The vessel continued in pursuit, changing her course as we changed ours, to keep before the wind. We went to work immediately, and put all the canvas upon the brig which we could get upon her, rigging out oars for extra studding-sail yards, and continued wetting down the sails by buckets of water whipped up to the mast-head, until about nine o’clock, when there came on a drizzling rain. “September 22d, when, upon coming on deck at seven bells in the morning, we found the other watch aloft throwing water upon the sails and, looking astern, we saw a small clipper-built brig with a black hull heading directly after us.
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