Definition of "before the mast" []

• Having living quarters in the forecastle (adjective)
• Describing seamen rather than officers (adjective)

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• "The month in which my seventeenth birthday arrived I signed on before the mast on the Sophie Sutherland, a three-topmast schooner bound on a seven-months 'seal-hunting cruise to the coast of"
• "Subsequently I shipped before the mast and sailed for the Japanese coast on a seal-hunting expedition, later going to Behring Sea."
• "Richard H. Dana served two years before the mast, and had every experience that falls to the lot of the sailor before the mast of our day."