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

Summer, 1856

Nineteen-year-old Mary Ann Patten and her husband, Joshua, were young and ambitious. Both from New England seafaring families, they had already completed their first clipper-ship race from New York to Shanghai with Joshua as captain. If they could win the race to San Francisco that year, their dream of purchasing their own clipper would be within reach. It would mean freedom. And the price of that freedom was one, last, dangerous transit-into the most treacherous waters in the world.

As their ship, Neptune's Car, left the icy bays of Maine and sailed down the jagged coast of Patagonia, Joshua fell deathly ill and was confined to the hulls. With no obvious option for a new captain, Joshua's crew started a mutiny-just as they drifted into a gale that would last 18 days. Mary Ann, heartbroken about her husband and swarmed by the riots around her, makes the only choice she can to save the ship and the crew. Staring into deadly Drake's Passage, Mary Ann takes the helm.

Set against the backdrop of the California Gold Rush, The Sea Captain's Wife finally gives Mary Ann Patten her due and recognizes her as the first female captain to navigate Antarctica, and includes brand new archival research from nineteenth century women's maritime journals, as well as Mazzeo's experiences from her own expedition to Antarctica in search of Mary Ann's route. Thrilling, harrowing, and heroic, The Sea Captain's Wife is the story of one woman who would face the extreme just to survive.