THE SEA CAPTAIN’S WIFE: A True Story of Mutiny, Love, and Adventure at the Bottom of the World, by Tilar J. Mazzeo
There is perhaps no more traditionally masculine literary genre than the seafaring tale. Be the subject Ishmael or Hornblower, such books nearly always offer a vision of men, alone, without the comforts — or tribulations — of female company.
So it is exciting to read Tilar J. Mazzeo’s “The Sea Captain’s Wife,” in which the 19-year-old Mary Ann Patten, in 1856, took command of her husband’s ship and became the first female captain to navigate the Southern Ocean. And while it is certainly one Massachusetts woman’s story, it is also a larger tale of how women fit into the seafaring culture of the time.
The answer is: not easily. Life at sea was rigidly hierarchical. Ships’ captains “brooked no opposition,” and to question their decisions “was tantamount to insurrection.” The captain’s wife, should she choose to accompany him, was permitted to speak only to her husband, the couple’s steward, the first mate and the occasional passenger. It was an existence so isolated that it is perhaps not surprising that Mary Ann’s own sister-in-law was not the only captain’s wife known to have been sent to an asylum for “domestic insubordination.”
Mary Ann was 17 when she first traveled with her husband, Joshua, on his clipper ship, Neptune’s Car. Stricken with seasickness, Mary Ann was unable to even walk the decks for fresh air, as it would have been considered shockingly improper to appear before the crew. They might not have enjoyed seeing her in any event — many sailors believed that having women aboard was unlucky. When her illness abated, Mary Ann would find that if she wished to leave the ship for shore, her large skirts required her being lowered from the deck via a precarious wicker swing. “Mary Ann almost certainly did not know how to swim,” Mazzeo notes. But even if she had, “the weight of her skirts would have sunk her.”
Despite this, Mary Ann became a proficient sailor, quickly learning how to navigate with a sextant. She literally learned “the ropes” that managed the sails. She studied the medical books in the ship’s library and earned the sailors’ loyalty by nursing the sick and injured.
Two years later, these skills and the affection of the crew would prove invaluable. As Neptune’s Car sailed the treacherous Drake Passage, Joshua was stricken with tubercular meningitis. Command would normally have fallen to the first mate — but he was, by any standard, an incompetent scoundrel who had repeatedly fallen asleep on watch and had therefore been shackled below deck. The second mate was wakeful but illiterate, and unable to navigate.
Two months pregnant, Mary Ann informed the sailors that she would be taking control of the ship. To her surprise, “each man responded by a promise to obey her in every command,” making her the first female captain of a merchant clipper.
Given that merely two years prior she had not been permitted to venture on deck, this pledge may surprise the reader, too. Were they available, it would have been interesting to see a few more reports from sailors about how they came to this decision. (It seems, based on the first mate’s ineptitude, that loathing for him might have motivated them as much as love for Mary Ann.)
What followed was an absolutely harrowing seven-month journey around Cape Horn, beset by blizzards and 50-foot waves, through which Mary Ann, now known as Captain Patten, safely piloted the ship.
When she returned to America, she was hailed by The New York Times as “a mighty pretty woman and a heroine.” The poet William Attfield and the author Harriet Beecher Stowe paid tribute to her in writing. Suffragists cited her as an example of women’s skill and courage; men saw her as an ideal wife loyally defending her husband’s property. For some time after the voyage she was, in Mazzeo’s words, “everyone’s darling.”
But the triumph was tempered by tragedy. Joshua, left blind and brain-damaged by his illness, died in an asylum shortly after their return to Boston, never knowing his son. And, while in a novel Mary Ann might have gone on to daringly captain many more ships, in real life she died at the age of 23, from tuberculosis. On her gravestone is the inscription, “Are there seas in Heaven, Joshua/And is there such a vessel as our Neptune’s Car?/If there is, wait for me and we shall explore/the vast and boundless reaches of Eternity.”
At even these wrenching moments, Mazzeo writes with a no-nonsense crispness that feels appropriately shipshape. The fact that the author is an experienced sailor is also enormously helpful when it comes to explaining the challenges of the sea. She is, in short, an author capable of guiding her readers through this remarkable chapter of history — as competently as Captain Patten sailed her ship.
THE SEA CAPTAIN’S WIFE: A True Story of Mutiny, Love, and Adventure at the Bottom of the World | By Tilar J. Mazzeo | St. Martin’s | 288 pp. | $30
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