A review by nferre
The Captain's Wife by Douglas Kelley

4.0

This is one of those books that I bought while on vacation, probably visiting a seaport, I read 20 pages or so and dropped the book thinking it was boring. A couple of years later, trying to get my Mt TBR down, I picked it up again, thinking I'd give it one more cursory glance and put it on my AVL list. Ten minutes after starting it, I was hooked on the story, more than that, on the characters, as my great grandmother married a seafaring man from Boston in 1853. While he was away at sea he wrote to her often, and I am now the owner of those letters. I was fascinated as this book is based on the true story of Mary Patten and her husband, Joshua. Joshua is Captain of a barque headed from the East Coast to San Francisco in 1856. He takes his wife with him as was common at that time, but is strapped to find a first mate until the last minute. His last minute choice will reap havoc on board as Joshua gets deathly ill, and his first mate gets thrown in the brig. Luckily his wife had learned to navigate and his 2nd mate was hard working, knowledgeable if not experienced and trustworthy. Between the two of them they take the ship through Cape Horn, one of the most treacherous passages in the world.

The book resonated with me as I found many similarities with my greatgrandmother and her first husband (whom we think was lost at sea), and for the strength of Mary, who not only tended her husband but managed to get the ship through the straights during awful weather, with a mutinous crew on board. All these things show up in the letters I have so I know that not only was this story not far-fetched, but a reality of the times.