The Epic Story of Every Living Thing
Is everything connected?
Imagine a teenager searching for her father who’s a sperm donor. And a jellyfish so colorful it’s nicknamed Fireworks. Plus, a 19-year-old woman putting down a mutiny and sailing a clipper ship around the horn. Add to that unexploded WWII bombs in the waters off Hawaii.
How can these disparate things be connected?
Only by an exceptionally skilled novelist.
I’ll leave it to the scientists to explain how every living thing is connected, but I will tell you about one of my favorite reads so far this year. And I’m giving away free copy!
Starting with the history, you’ll be amazed to meet the first woman to command an American merchant ship back in 1856. She dealt with trouble that would have been a challenge for an experienced male ship captain. And she did it while eight months pregnant!
An oil painting by Gordon Johnson depicting Mary Patten on the clipper ship Neptune's Car, Atlantic Mutual Companies.
Back in the 1850s, clipper ships loaded with cargo sailed the long a treacherous voyage from New York to San Franciso. As remains true today, time is money.
Products made no money sitting in the hold. The sooner to market, the bigger the profit. Companies paid ship captains a huge bonus if they completed the trip around the tip of South America in less than 100 days. To add to the fun, ships leaving New York at the same time raced each other around the [Cape] the Horn to California and the latest gold rush.
Little is known about sea captain Joshua Patton. For a change, we know more about the woman in the story. Mary Ann Brown was from a well-to-do- Boston family, not quite 16 years old when she married Joshua in 1853. It must have been a marriage for love because Mary went to sea with Joshua at a time when few women wanted to sail with their husbands and even fewer were allowed to.
Captain Patton was known on the eastern seaboard a “young and rising seaman” and had already commanded his ship Neptune's Car on some of the fastest voyages on record. After the wedding the couple set sail from New York to San Francisco, China, London and back to New York.
Mary was no lady of leisure. She learned to navigate the clipper and assisted her husband with his duties onboard. Imagine the life, sailing around the world on this ship!
The American Clipper Ship "Neptune's Car" in Hong Kong Harbor. "Neptune's Car" built and launched in 1853 in the yard of Page & Allen at Portsmouth, Virginia for Foster & Nickerson of New York.
In July 1856, Mary had become pregnant with her first child. Still, she boarded the clipper with her husband for another passage around the horn. Three other ships left New York at the same time and the race was on. Josha’s fastest trip prior had been 90 days.
The first mate started the trouble on Neptune’s Car. Sullen and indifferent to his duties, he slept on watch and left the sails reefed, or shortened, during good weather and favorable winds. No way to win a race. Joshua relieved him of duty and locked him in the brig.
The second mate wasn’t skilled in navigation, so despite feeling under the weather, Joshua took double duty. As they neared the southern tip of South America, he was so sick he couldn’t get out of bed. Mary took command, set the course, navigated the vessel and nursed her husband.
Mary Ann Brown Patton, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Unfortunately, Joshua grew sicker and his fever “settled into a congestion of the brain producing delirium and blindness” according to the New York Times.
As Mary sailed the Neptune’s Car into the Pacific and up along the coast of Chile, the first mate wrote her a message describing the dangerous seas ahead and volunteering to assume command of the ship. She wrote back saying if her husband thought him unfit as first mate, she would not make him captain.
The seas did grow rough, so much so that she tied Joshua to his bed so that he wouldn’t be thrown from it. She shaved his head in an attempt to relieve his fever.
Below decks, the first mate sought to inflame the crew to mutiny. Hearing this, Mary called the ship’s mates and sailors aft and appealed for their support. Apparently, every man pledged to support her come what may (except the first mate who remained in the brig).
“It was pleasant to witness their cheerful obedience to her orders, as each man vied with his fellows in the performance of his duty,” according to the New York Tribute in an article published later.
Mary sailed the ship into San Francisco harbor 56 days after taking charge and behind only one of the three competing ships. At the dock, she reported she was 19 years old and nine months pregnant.
Unfortunately, Joshua Patton never recovered from his illness and did not know when Mary delivered a healthy baby boy and named him for his father. She became a bit of celebrity for her feat, though she avoided publicity, saying she had only done her duty and demurred speaking of her trials on the voyage.
The merchant company’s insurance company paid Mary one thousand dollars for her trouble, though many, including the New York Tribune, believed she deserved a heftier recompense for delivering the ship and cargo worth some 350 thousand dollars.
Sadly, Mary, died four years later of tuberculosis. Her successful command of the merchant ship seems even more amazing when taking into account how difficult it was in the 1850’s for a woman to even survive giving birth and the myriad diseases for which there was no cure.
And now for the book that inspired this story!
The Epic Story of Every Living Thing by Deb Caletti is one of my favorite reads this year. It has received five starred reviews, which means the professional book reviewers loved it. Some readers believe the story started too slowly. Others said it had too much going on. In fact, one reader said by the end “it all becomes a soup.” In addition, some people will have trouble with the idea of a sperm donor and his 41 offspring.
But here’s what I liked.
Teenager Harper Proulx maintains a persona on social media that shows her to be an attractive, adventurous nature girl. Her all-consuming love affair with her smartphone and Instagram hides a heap of anxiety, which partly comes from her helicopter mother relentless push for safety and academic perfection and partly from the fearmongering click bait on social media.
Of course, the protagonist is not admirable in the beginning of the book! The story is all about her journey of growth and change.
Harper’s a girl who doesn’t know who she is. She’s prodded toward change by her desire to know more about her sperm donor father, for surely if she knew him, she’d understand herself.
Social media is amazing. And all it takes is for someone to “comment my cousin has a friend who looks exactly like you” or some such on her picture, and Harper has a clue to follow. Despite sealed records and a mother who refuses to discuss it, Harper discovers her father…
…is a hippie beach bum in Hawaii.
But wait. Between the chapters come snippets from a ship’s logbook. First written by a Joshua Patton and later by his wife Mary, they begin to tell a story that appears to have no connection to Harper. These are fictionalized, but Mary’s long ordeal at sea is true. Before arriving in San Fransisco, she’d worn the same clothes for 50 days.
A Ship’s Trade Log Book, courtesy of the British Library
Harper travels to Hawaii to meet her father, a scuba diving instructor. It’s not overnight change, but afraid-of-everything Harper learns to scuba dive and explores a shipwreck in the waters near Molokini Crater.
She also sees a rare Halitrephes maasi jellyfish and begins fell for herself that being alive in the world is much more satisfying than being an image created on Instagram.
You have got to see the video of this jellyfish they call fireworks.
The jelly fish habitat was used for bombing practice when the United States entered World War II. Unexploded ordnance from WWII still lies there on the ocean floor.
In 1975 and 1984 the U.S. Navy was detonated some of the bombs for “safety reasons” in the area of Molokini Crater. The latter explosion blowing up an estimated one hundred square yards of coral reef and killing thousands of fish.
The author brings all these threads together in the story. You have to read it to appreciate genius. There’s so much more in the book than what I’ve talked about here.
📢🆓 📕📢🆓 📕📢🆓 📕
I want you to read it so badly, I’m giving away a free copy of the book. I wish I could send one to you all. Unfortunately, it’s not in the budget. Please comment or reply to this email to let me know if you want to be in the drawing. I’ll draw a random winner by November 1st.
News & Links
Don’t forget!
Next Wednesday please join my virtual event in celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the Integration of the US Armed Forces.
A Certain Courage features yours truly and stories of individual black women pioneers in the Womens Army Corps.
Wednesday, October 25, 2023 | 7:00PM CST
Virtual via Zoom. Register Here:
https://siue.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_eqp_v-CeQBybOpyMk3Dd2A
You all are used to zoom by now. It’s so easy, just tune in while enjoying the comfort of your own home. You’ll enjoy this!
Sources