Creesy’s father taught her the mathematics of navigation at an early age. She married Captain Josiah Creesy and together they sailed around the world. In 1851, they decided to race several other ships sailing from New York to San Francisco aboard the clipper Flying Cloud. They broke the previous record by eleven days.
At age sixteen, Mary Ann Brown married Captain Joshua Adams Patten, accompanying him on two voyages aboard his ship, Neptune’s Car. When he became ill, she was pregnant with their first child. She bravely took command of the 1,600-ton clipper ship and navigated it through dangerous waters and brought it safely around Cape Horn to San Francisco.
