Episode 1

Summer 1856. Nineteen-year-old Mary Ann Patten and her husband, Joshua, are young and ambitious. Both from New England seafaring families, they have already completed their first voyage around the world with Joshua as captain. Their dream of building a home and a family is coming within reach. It would mean freedom. But the price of that freedom is one last dangerous transit – a race to deliver supplies to the California Gold Rush.
As their ship leaves New York Harbour and sails down the jagged coast of South America, Joshua falls dangerously ill. The treacherous first mate is imprisoned in the brig for insubordination. With no obvious option for a new captain, Mary Ann steps into the breach forced to take the helm from her husband. Within days she has put down a mutiny and must now attempt to steer this 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.
Author Tilar J. Mazzeo undertook an expedition of her own to Cape Horn and Antarctica in 2022 to retrace Mary Ann’s footsteps. Drawing on her own first-hand experiences, as well as new archival research into nineteenth century women’s maritime writing, this thrilling adventure blows apart the well-worn image of the meek, retiring nineteenth-century wife.

Read by Nina Bowers.
Written by Tilar J. Mazzeo
Abridged by Katrin Williams
Producer: Lu Kemp

Tilar J Mazzeo is the New York Times bestselling author of more than a half-dozen award-winning non-fiction cultural histories, including Widow Cliquot – now a major Hollywood Film.