The Sea Captain’s Wife: A True Story of Mutiny, Love, and Adventure at the Bottom of the World

In this immersive account, literature scholar Mazzeo (Sisters in Resistance) spotlights a woman who was once “no less celebrated... than Florence Nightingale.” In the 1850s, amid the California Gold Rush, huge, fast clippers routinely circumnavigated the treacherous tip of South America. The captains were international celebrities, and young Joshua Patten longed to achieve such superstardom. However, bad luck struck in 1856, when he and other captains decided to race to California, leaving too early in the season: at such short notice, Patten hired a “hot-headed, violent, and duplicitous” first mate; then, during the voyage, Patten was laid up with tuberculosis. But his wife, pregnant 19-year-old Mary Ann, a petite woman self-taught at “celestial navigation,” was able to convince the crew to accept her as captain, and proceeded to sail them safely through incredible storms and fields of icebergs, foiling the nefarious first mate not once but twice along the way. Mazzeo offers plenty of juicy details about sea life; her tracking of events on land is less captivating, though readers will learn much about the grisly horrors of mid-19th-century travel. She also follows the Pattens’ story, a somewhat unrelentingly tragic one, beyond the famed voyage itself (when they disembarked, Mary Ann, disallowed as a woman from conducting business transactions, couldn’t even raise funds for her husband’s medical care). The result is a bracing high-seas adventure and a forgotten slice of women’s history. (Dec.)