Lost in the Stacks: The Sea Captain's Wife

The crew of the clipper ship Neptune’s Car needed a miracle. To one side lay the rocky coast of Tierra del Fuego, to the other the treacherous icebergs of the Southern Ocean. Captain Patten lay insensible with fever while below deck the shackled former first mate plotted mutiny. At the helm was the acting First Mate, an able seaman who alas, could neither read nor write and therefore could not navigate. With the polar waves below and gale force winds shrieking, surely none on Neptune’s Car would survive their passage around Cape Horn.

Then, onto the deck where no woman was welcome in the 1850s, stepped a slight young woman. Nineteen and newly pregnant, the captain’s wife, Mary Ann Patten, courageously offered to steer the ship. Mary Ann could read and Mary Ann could write. In a previous voyage she perfected her skills with the sextant. In short, this teenaged girl could navigate...if only the men would let her.

In the thrilling true story The Sea Captain’s Wife, Tilar Mazzeo vividly brings to life the bygone world of clipper ships. A world where an ambitious young couple could be set for life, or where they could meet their end in the watery deep.

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