For landing and taking off hides, San Diego is decidedly the best place in California.  The harbour is small and land-locked; there is no surf; the vessels lie within a cable’s length of the beach, and the beach itself is smooth, hard sand, without rocks or stones.  For these reasons, it is used by all the vessels in the trade, as a depot.  –Richard Henry Dana (1835)

Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana Jr. is an American literary classic.  The thrilling narrative of a voyage from Boston to the California coast in the 1830s was Dana’s personal memoir of his time at sea—an account which prominently featured early San Diego. 

The story of Richard H. Dana and San Diego.