The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-03-21 00:00:00

711 E CAPTAIN'S WIFE.

The Daily News, in one of its leading articles, tells the
following interesting story :—" One day last week the
ueople in the streets of New Yoric observed a litter, evi-
dently containing a sick person, carried up from the ship.
ping to the Battery Hotel. Beside the litter walked a
young creature who, but for her careworn countenance,
and her being near her confinement, might have been taken
for a little school girl. Her story soon became known,
and it had presently reached all hearts. She is now
twenty. At seventeen she had married a sea captain—a
gallant young man of five-and-twenty, she being a softly-
reared young lady of East Boston. Just after the mar-
riage Captain Patton was offered the command of a ship
—the Neptune's Car—prepared for the circumnavigation
of the globe, and ready to sail that day but for the illness
of the commander. Captain Patton declined the offer,
declaring it impossible to leave his bride so soon and
suddenly for so long a time. He was told that he would
be allowed to take her with him. She agreed ; and they
were on board within twelve hours from the first question
asked. During that voyage she learned whatever her
husband could teach her, and especially she became
practised in taking observations, and in keeping the
reckoning of the ship. She studied navigation, in short,
to some purpose. The voyage lasted seventeen months.
Last August the captain and his wife sailed in their old
ship for San Francisco, being so proud of the vessel as to
pique themselves on reaching California sooner than two
others which took their departure at the same time. It
was this riyalship which first disclosed to Captain Patton
the evil quality of his first mate, who was not only lazy
and negligent to a dangerous degree, but ill-disposed. He
was evidently bent on carrying the ship into Valparaiso,
for purposes of his own. Anxiety and toil tcld on the
captain's health before Cape Horn was reached. He there
deposed the first mate from office, and, in the effort to
discharge the duty himself, sank down in fever which soon
issued in congestion of the brain. Before he lost his
reason he declared positively against going into Valpa
raise, saying that the men would desert, and the cargo be
lost before !the consignees could arrive ; and his honour
and conscience were concerned in going on to the right
port. This was enough. His wife determined that it
should be done. As soon as her husband became hope-
lessly delirious the first mate attempted to assume
authority, and wrote a letter to 'vlrs. Patton, charging
her with the responsibility of all their lives if she opposed
him. She told him that her husband had not trusted him
while he was well, and that she would not trust him while
her husband was ill. She assembled the crew, told them
the facts, and appealed to them to disregard the first mate,
to accept her authority in her husband's place, and to obey
the second mate in the working of the ship. Every man
of them agreed ; and they sustained her well, as far as
their power of support went. They looked with pity and
reverence upon her as they saw her through the cabin
windows at her desk, keeping the reckoning and making
entries in the log. Noon and midnight she was on deck
taking observations. She marked the charts, made no
mistakes, and carried the ship into port in the best con-
dition on the 13th of November. She had studied the
medical
se
bocoaks on board, to learn how best to treat her
husband's
; and she never left him, day or night, but
to perform his duties. Happily he was a Freemason; his
brother masons at San Francisco were kind, and sent them
back by the first practicable opportunity to New York.
There they arrived wholly destitute—the husband blind,
deaf, delirious, dying—the wife worn and grave, but
active and composed. She was anxious to reach Boston
before her confinement; but, by the last accounts, she
was disappointed by her husband being too ill to be
removed. The New York underwriters sent her an imme-
diate gift of 1,000 dollars ; and the owners of the vessel
and others are taking measures to testify their sense of
the conduct by which a vast amount of property has been
saved, and their interests and those of their crew have
been conscientiously considered under singular extremity.
With our Lady Fan3hawes, Lucy Ilutehinsons, and
Catherine Mompessons may now rank the Mary Patton
of a kindred nation. It needs no other Freemasonry than
that of the universal human heart to secure her reverence
and welcome in every port she may put into henceforth in
the rough voyage of life."