"A couple of years ago, I stumbled across a most unusual story from the annals of old San Francisco. It concerned a 19-year-old woman named Mary Ann Patten who spent two months captaining a 216-foot-long clipper ship after her husband fell deathly ill during an around-the-world journey. In that time, Patten squashed an on-board mutiny, won the loyalty of the crew and kept her husband alive. The kicker? She did all of this while pregnant with her first child."
"At times, The Sea Captain's Wife plays out like a good, old-fashioned, around-the-world adventure. The "forest of masts" at San Francisco's Gold Rush-clogged shoreline. The floating, lamplit brothel boats that greeted Neptune's Car in Hong Kong. The teeming warehouses of London's docklands. The gardens and church steeples of New York City. Mazzeo describes each new city in ways that transport the reader back to the place, era and, frankly, the smells."
Mary Ann Patten, age 19 and pregnant, commanded a 216-foot clipper for two months while her husband lay deathly ill, quashing an on-board mutiny and securing crew loyalty to keep him alive. Mid-19th-century maritime life featured many seamen described as an international coterie of incompetent, untrustworthy "vagrants with an attitude," while captains were often honorable yet isolated. Port scenes include Gold Rush San Francisco's dense masts, floating brothels in Hong Kong, London's crowded dock warehouses, and New York's gardens and church steeples. The account also covers navigation tools, ship hierarchies, shipping politics, and the daily hardships sailors endured on long voyages.
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