# Nicholas — Two Years Before the Mast character guide

> Nicholas in Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana Jr..

**Role:** supporting

**First appearance:** 0005-iii

## Snapshot

A Sandwich Islander of enormous frame and greater experience, whose quiet loyalty to Dana becomes a bulwark against the officer's authority.

## Who they are

Nicholas is a Hawaiian sailor Dana meets curing hides at San Diego, a man so vast that no pair of shoes in California fits him and so seasoned that he has sailed on merchantmen, men-of-war, privateers, and worse. Illiterate but shrewd, he respects Dana's education and predicts, half-jokingly, that the young Bostonian will one day command a ship and haze him in turn. Their alliance keeps the officer in check, and Nicholas's strange, hard history gives Dana a window into the wider, rougher world of the forecastle.

## In the story

### [XIX](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/two_years_before_the_mast_se/chapters/xix)

A giant Frenchman, immensely strong and ignorant, with a past involving slave trading and a trial for his life; he works alongside the narrator curing hides.

### [XX](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/two_years_before_the_mast_se/chapters/xx)

Visited by Frenchmen from the Rosa's crew in the evenings.

## Links

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