THE SEA CAPTAIN'S WIFE

Set in the summer of 1856 in the midst of a celebrity clipper ship race to deliver supplies to the California Gold Rush and in the midst of the mid-nineteenth-century tuberculosis epidemic, captain's wife Mary Ann Patten is forced to take the helm, put down a mutiny, and attempt to steer a 216' clipper ship laden with the modern equivalent of $11 million dollars of cargo through Drake's Passage and around Cape Horn, the most treacherous waters in the world.

Caught in an 18-day gale, Mary Ann makes the only choice she can to save the ship and her crew and turns to run out of the storm and straight into Antarctica. In doing so she becomes both the first woman to command a merchant vessel and among the first women to navigate through the dangerous and magical landscape of Antarctica.

Drawing on the author's first-hand 2022 expedition to Antarctica, in search of Mary Ann's route, as well as new archival research into nineteenth-century women's maritime journals, this adventurous narrative biography is a timely contribution to new and increasingly relevant travel writing about the White Continent and its climate history.

This project has been supported by expedition funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (2022-2023).

Tilar J. Mazzeo is Professeure Associée at University of Montreal, the former Clara C. Piper Associate Professor of English at Colby College, and the author of numerous works of narrative nonfiction. Her books have been New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Los Angeles Times bestsellers.