To the Edge of the World by Tilar J. Mazzeo

Author:Tilar J. Mazzeo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Elliott and Thompson Limited

The days at sea passed quickly. Mary Ann was now an old hand at ocean voyages. When Joshua was at the helm, Mary Ann joined him with the second sextant and confirmed his readings. She continued to practice the arts of navigation. She had learned, as well, “the ropes” and how the complex sails were managed. She was a captain’s wife, but she was also a seaman’s daughter.

Mary Ann had nothing of the rebel in her. Unlike Mrs. Bloomer, who was much in the news in the mid-1850s, Mary Ann did not expect to wear the pants—or the pantaloons known as “bloomers” that were popular in some progressive New England circles. Like the sea captain’s wives whom Nathaniel Hawthorne admired, she was good-natured, cheerful, quietly religious, and deeply and simply loved her husband. No captain’s wife gave up the comforts of home except for a love story. Joshua reciprocated with tenderness, passion, and admiration for a wife in whose intelligence and good nature he delighted.

So, when she saw how things were unfolding with Mr. Keeler, at first Mary Ann said nothing. At dinners in the captain’s cabin, waited on by the steward, Mary Ann listened to Mr. Keeler and took his measure. There was something brutish and ugly, she felt, in the first mate’s character. Many sailors thought that a woman aboard a ship was bad luck, and Keeler, a barrel-chested man with an outsized swagger, made no secret of his contempt. Mary Ann was the only woman aboard the ship. The snide remarks about women at sea would only have been aimed in her direction. Mary Ann shrugged off the first mate’s incivilities, but she was definitely going to keep her eye on Keeler.

Mary Ann was also keeping her eye on Joshua. Joshua worried her, if anything, more than Mr. Keeler. He was suffering from crippling headaches, and he had a lingering cough that frightened her and reminded her of her father. George Patten Sr. had been failing quickly in Boston, and Mary Ann knew that he might not be alive when she returned from this circumnavigation. It was a sober and tearful subject, and nineteen is a young age in any century to contemplate losing a father.

Joshua dismissed her worries about his health. Fit as a fiddle. He’d been butting heads with Mr. Keeler since they’d left Sandy Hook, and the winds were fickle, and that was a trial for any captain. Mary Ann might have nodded. But she was not persuaded.

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