Nordhoff, though only thirty years old in 1831, had already passed through enough adventure to fill an active lifetime. He was born in Prussia, where his father was a wealthy liberal who had served in Blucher’s army and had later set up a school at Erwitte. Compelled for political reasons to leave, the elder Nordhoff gathered together all his funds, about $50,000, and reached America in 1834. The family went to the Mississippi Valley, and for a time lived an anomalous life, eating in the wilderness from rich silver and drinking imported German mineral water. The boy was left an orphan at the age of nine, and was reared by the Rev. Wilhelm Nast of the Methodist Church in Cincinnati. Revolting against the rigid ecclesiastical discipline to which he was subjected, believing that his health was suffering from indoors work, and longing for the adventures at sea of which he had read in Marryat and Cooper, in 1844 he ran away. Hundreds of thousands of American boys in the last half century have read the three books in which Nordhoff graphically relates his experiences aboard men of war, merchant ships, a whaler, and a cod-fishing boat. The story of how he went to sea is an interesting illustration of his pluck and persistence. He had $25, two extra shirts, and an extra pair of socks when he left Cincinnati, and his money took him to Baltimore. At every vessel to which he applied he was met by the same rebuff: “Ship you, you little scamp? Not I; we won’t carry runaway boys. Clear out!” Undaunted, he went on to Philadelphia, and found a place on the _Sun_ as printer’s devil, at $2–4 a week and his board. He confided his ambition to no one, but every Saturday afternoon he was down among the shipping, looking for a place. Finally he heard that the Frigate _Columbus_, 74 guns, was about to sail under Commodore Biddle for the Far East, and sought a berth--again in vain. Still undiscouraged, he induced the editor of the _Sun_, to whose home he daily took a bundle of proofs, to introduce him to Commodore Elliot. The editor’s note ran, “Please give him a talking to,” and the gruff officer scolded the boy roundly for wanting to ruin his life, described the dissolute, brutalizing existence of most sailors, and flatly refused him a place. But Nordhoff returned daily until the Commodore yielded.