About Today’s Title

I can’t think of a more perfect match for this book subject, and title than today’s song. In 1970’s song Closer to Home by Grand Funk Railroad, the singer speaks as a ship’s captain who has taken ill and is facing a mutiny. In the song the mutineer puts his hands around the captain’s throat, and it seems that he might die. But the song leaves that open to interpretation. When the captain repeatedly sings “I’m getting closer to my home”, is he talking about having escaped his situation and returning to home port? Or is he referring to his final “home”, i.e. his eternal rest? I’m guessing it’s the latter.

While the circumstances of the captain’s (probable) death in the song differs from the events in today’s book, the two stories are otherwise a close match.

In this YouTube video GFR performs the song live at Shea Stadium in New York in 1971. The notes to the video say that their concert was the attendance record-holder for Shea, surpassing even the Beatles performance there in 1965 — pretty good for a band from Flint, Michigan.

There don’t seem to be many modern accounts of the life of Mary Patten, but there probably should be. After reading this book by Tilar Mazzeo, I’m asking myself why I’ve never heard her story before.

Mary Patten was the wife of a sea captain. Her husband Joshua wasn’t just any sea captain. He was the captain of a clipper ship in mid-1800s New England. Clipper ships were built for speed, and Joshua had high hopes that captaining clipper ships would be his path to a sizable income and an early retirement from the sea to a quiet farm in Maine with his young bride Mary.

Mazzeo’s book takes us back to the time before the civil war when the United States was still a young country, and gold had just been discovered in far off California. Joshua had earned a temporary captaincy on a clipper ship, the Neptune’s Car, sailing with cargo from the east coast to California. From there the ship and her crew would venture on to Hong Kong where they would trade for tea. With the tea aboard they’d head around Africa and up to Liverpool to sell that tea and then return to America with a cargo of goods for the households of New England.

In those days heading west by ship from New England to California meant going south around the bottom of South America — around Cape Horn, through some of the roughest, deadliest waters in the world. This trip around the Horn, while challenging, was ably handled by captain and crew.

The young captain had set sail with his wife Mary. A captain’s wife aboard ship in those days was, as Mazzeo puts it, “unusual, but… not exceptional”. But, in the Age of Sail, sailors had superstitions about women on board ship. Basically, they thought women were bad luck.

Mary, however, proved her worth on that trip by nursing some sailors who fell ill. She earned the trust of the crew, which would come in handy later.

It was on that voyage that Mary learned to navigate. Navigation was the responsibility of the captain and his officers, but Mary became quite skilled — self-taught as a way to fill the long hours aboard ship.

With a successful circumnavigation accomplished, Captain Joshua Patten was awarded another chance to pilot Neptune’s Car by the ship’s owners. But unfortunately, as he and Mary began that second voyage, they did not know that Joshua carried a deadly disease within him that would threaten not only himself, but the lives of all on board the Neptune’s Car as it battled sea and storms around Cape Horn.

That passage, with a mutiny brewing as the captain fell ill, and violent storms pursuing the ship around the Horn, tested not only Joshua but Mary as well. How she rose to the occasion as her husband fell ill is the centerpiece of this book and makes for some thrilling reading. She became the first woman to captain a ship around Cape Horn.

Mazzeo’s book covers not only the thrilling voyage, but Joshua and Mary’s lives before and after. It is a complete account of all we know of the life of this courageous and able woman. And, while the lead up to the fateful voyage does drag a bit, overall I enjoyed this book.

RATING: Three Stars ⭐⭐⭐

RATING COMMENTS: A complete account of the life of Mary Patten, who, in 1856, courageously taking command of her husband’s clipper ship in perilous seas while he lay ill. How she did so is the thrilling centerpiece of this book.

WHERE I GOT MY COPY: I read an advanced reviewer’s copy from Netgalley and the publisher St. Martin’s Press. The book goes on sale Tuesday, Deccember 9th.