Set in the summer of 1856 - in the midst of a ship race to deliver supplies to the California Gold Rush - captain's wife Mary Ann Patten is forced to take the helm from her husband. Within days she has put down a mutiny and must attempt to steer a 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.
Caught in an 18-day gale, Mary Ann makes the only choice she can to save the ship and her crew. She turns to run out of the storm and straight into the wilds of Antarctica. In doing so she becomes both the first woman to command a merchant vessel and among the first women to navigate through this dangerous and magical frozen landscape.
Drawing on the author's first-hand 2022 expedition to Antarctica in search
of Mary Ann's route, 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.
This is a true story of astonishing courage and ambition.