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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Annelie Geissler
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THE SEA CAPTAIN'S WIFE

Tilar J. Mazzeo

A True Story of Mutiny, Love, and Adventure at the Bottom of the World

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.

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Book Published 2025-09-12 by St. Martin's Press

Comments

A rip-roaring, seafaring adventure with a twist. Mazzeo has fashioned a captivating role-reversal tale [about how], for the first time ever, a woman became captain of a merchant ship - with the crew's approval. A thoroughly entertaining, delightful story.

Tilar J. Mazzeo's knowledgeable and entertaining new book blends a sharp-eyed portrait of a seafaring heroine with a vivid look at the rapidly changing city - Gold Rush-era San Francisco - for which she set sail. . . [A] nonfiction story as thrilling as any eyewitness account. . . A cinematic. . . stylish, intelligent account.

[U]ndeniably one of the greatest stories of a bygone era.

Immersive. [A] bracing high-seas adventure and a forgotten slice of women's history.

Mazzeo mines, to thrilling effect, the little-known 1856 story of a young, pregnant woman who navigates a clipper ship around Cape Horn when her sea-captain husband takes ill. Mazzeo turns exemplary research into nineteenth-century maritime history into a fascinating tale.

An epic tale of courage, fortitude, and grit, brilliantly narrated in this deeply researched and compelling account.

Captivating and immersive...Propelled by evocative writing and painstaking research, you feel transported into the world at home and at sea with the captain's wife, Mary Ann, as she rises to the occasion under harrowing circumstances. A remarkable story that deserves this definitive narrative.

Once an international sensation, then slipping into the mist of history, the story of nineteen-year-old Mary Ann Patten's remarkable feat of seamanship has been rescued and brought to vivid life in Tilar Mazzeo's The Sea Captain's Wife - and powerfully informed by Mazzeo's own consummate knowledge of the sea.

Mary Ann, the captain's wife, nineteen and pregnant, is forced to take over her husband's ship mid-voyage. With no training, equipped only with nautical almanacs and how-to guides for sea navigation, and facing off a mutiny, she decides to put her cards on the table. The crew responds by anointing her their captain. It is the mid-1800s, and they are sailing straight into a monumental storm. Tilar J. Mazzeo has written a riveting story about a woman we might otherwise never know, and brilliantly sets it within a larger history about the upward mobility and wealth that the seas offered--and just as quickly took away. A fantastic read!

What a breathtaking journey! The perilous ship race, the treacherous weather, a mutinous uprising, the life-threatening illness of the captain, and most of all, the heroic efforts of his wife, Mary Ann Patten, as she steps into his shoes to become the first female captain to traverse the Southern Ocean, all while pregnant. Tilar Mazzeo's The Sea Captain's Wife is a spellbinding triumph of storytelling and rewriting a valiant woman back into the historical narrative where she belongs. Everyone should read this book!

Tilar Mazzeo's The Sea Captain's Wife expertly weaves together a touching love story and a gripping tale of survival. Mazzeo explores how passion, endurance, and a devoted partnership can overcome the odds, even in the most isolated and desperate circumstances. Through meticulous research and vivid descriptions, Mazzeo reveals how Mary Ann Patton's unwavering perseverance and brilliant navigation prevailed against the most formidable obstacles.

Exciting. 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.