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

The true story of the first female captain of a merchant ship and her treacherous navigation of Antarctica's deadly waters, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Widow Clicquot

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 voyage around the world with Joshua as captain. If they could win the race to San Francisco that year, their dream of building a farm and a family might 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 New York Harbor and sailed down the jagged coast of South America, Joshua fell deathly ill and was confined to his bunk, delirious. The treacherous first mate, confined to the brig for insubordination, was agitating for mutiny. With no obvious option for a new captain and heartbroken about her husband, Mary Ann stepped into the breach and convinced the crew to support her, just as they slammed into a gale that would last 18 days. Determined to save the ship, the crew, and their future, she faces down the deadly waters of Drake's Passage.

Set against the backdrop of the California Gold Rush and taking us to the brink of Antarctica, The Sea Captain's Wife finally gives Mary Ann Patten--the first woman to command a merchant vessel as captain -- her due. Mazzeo draws on new archival research from nineteenth-century women's maritime journals and on her own expedition to the Southern Ocean and Antarctica in search of Mary Ann's route. Thrilling, harrowing, and heroic, The Sea Captain's Wife is the story of one woman who, for love, would do what was necessary to survive.

Author: Tilar J. Mazzeo
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 12/09/2025
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.25h x 6.12w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781250352583


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 10/01/2025 pg. 12
Publishers Weekly 10/13/2025
Kirkus Reviews 10/15/2025

About the Author
DR. TILAR J. MAZZEO is the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle bestselling author of numerous award-winning works of narrative nonfiction, including history and biography titles. Formerly the Clara C. Piper Associate Professor of English at Colby College and Professeur Associée in the Department of World Literatures at the University of Montreal, Dr. Mazzeo left the academy in 2019 to focus fulltime on writing. A fifth-generation sailor and tenth-generation Mainer (where the Patten story begins), she lives today on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, where, with her husband, she captains a Vancouver 42 offshore sailboat.