The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Mutiny, Love, and Adventure at the Bottom of the World

To understand how rare a passage from an Atlantic port around Cape Horn to San Francisco in under a hundred days was, consider that in the entire history of the clipper era only twenty-two times did any captain ever achieve that feat of seamanship and good fortune. But the height of the clipper ship era began in 1848, the same year that South Thomaston became a town, with the discovery of gold in far-off California. When Joshua and Mary Ann slipped into Victoria Harbor: George Lai, “Hong Kong and the Surprising Truth about the British Empire,” The Spectator, May 18, 2022. In heavy seas, they passed Cape Horn far offshore, and by September 18 they had finally “doubled” the Horn, passing back through 50º S on the west side of Chile, into calmer weather.