Happy
International Woman's Day! I have finally remembered to continue my
blog. Today we're learning about an exceedingly impressive woman! She
was the first woman to sail a commercial ship and at the time she was
nineteen and pregnant!
Her
name was Mary Patten and she grew up in a family of mariners which
she would later marry into when she married Joshua Patten, captain of
the ship Neptune's Car. They had one sucessful and uneventful
journey with the ship. Because in 1856, woman were considered bad
luck on a ship but Joshua didn't want to leave behind his young wife,
he got permission to let her aboard as well.
The
ship and five others had entered in a contest of between some
shipping companies on which of their ships would arrive in San
Fransico after making the same route to get there. And if they made a
speedier delivery, they got a pay bonus as well. So when they began
the immediate incompetence of the first mate William Keeler.
Keeler
would sleep on his shifts, refuse to put out the sails or something
stupid like setting course through coral reef beds. He wasn't a
useful guy. So, Joshua had the man shackled and isolated to his
cabin.
In
the absence of a first mate, Joshua was worked to the bone, his
second mate couldn't navigate and his third mate was illiterate, so
with no one to help him, he had to do both shifts, always awake.
He
began to rely on his wife Mary to help him to navigate the ship. Due
to his stress, lakc of sleep and undiagnosed turberculosis on top of
the pneumonia he just got, he collapsed and was taken below deck.
Mary was now doing everything. She read medical books, trying to
learn how to help her ailing husband.
She
also took control of steering the ship, with help from the second
mate to dock the ship to stay out of a very dangerous storm. Mary's
husband was not doing well. The fever had reached his brain and he
was partially blinded and deaf as well as incoherent.
On
top of all the trials Mary was dealing with, first mate Keeler tried
to get the crew to mutiny, but luckily the crew was smart enough not
to go for his silly idea. Joshua continued doing poorly and Mary
continued to show her steel. She steered the ship though dangerous
waters with glaciers falling apart, sheer piles of ice and incredibly
bad weather.
Joshua's
fever broke and in a poor choice of judgenment despite apparently
being lucid at the time, gave controls of the ship to the sneaky, and
useless first mate. During the time Keeler was in charge, he wouldn't
let Mary above deck, thinking she wouldn't know now that they were
going off course. He had wildly underestimated Mary's abilities. She
had made herself a compass from parts in the Captain's room and she
told the captain about this, which led to Keeler being back in chains
in his cabin and Mary back in charge where she belonged.
At
this point, Joshua relapsed and was completely deaf and blind for
twenty-five days. Mary was now six months pregnant and she took
complete control of the ship. They made it to their destination on
November 15, 1856, a full 137 days after starting. Mary had captained
for 56 of these days, in the terrible weather and without changing
clothes for two months.
And
guess what? Their ship still beat all but one of the four boats they
were in the friendly bet against to the port. With their arrival,
Mary became quite the local celebrity, with many newspapers writing
about her excapades. The ship's owners Foster & Nickerson refused
to pay the captain's wages.
All
they received for their troubles and Mary's efforts to save cargo
worth $350,000 was an insurance company giving Mary $1,000. But
because she was a nice woman, she actually wrote them to thank them.
There
would be no happy ending for Joshua and Mary. Mary gave birth to her
son Joshua Jr and was forced to put her husband in an asylum because
he was doing so poorly. He would die there. And Mary herself would
join him soon after. She had also contracted turberculosis and she
died at the young age of twenty-three.
Mary
was buried next to her husband with a small bit of her story on her
headstone. Though her name lives on through the U.S. Merchant Marine
Academy in King's Point, NY when they opened a hospital. It was
called Patten Hospital in memory of a woman whose strength and
courage they wanted to continue to share.
Sources:
Mary Patten: The First Woman to Command a Ship http://www.rejectedprincesses.com/princesses/mary-patten
The Story of Mary Patten https://www.nshof.org/sailing-an-american-experience/women-in-sailing/80-stories/women-in-sailing/359-the-story-of-mary-patten.html
Mary Patten, 19 and Preganant, Takes Command of a Clipper Ship in 1856
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