During Women’s History Month it is worthwhile remembering Eleanor Creesy, the navigator of the clipper ship Flying Cloud, who with her husband, Captain Josiah Creesy, set world sailing records for the fastest passage between New York and San Francisco. 

Eleanor Prentiss was born in 1814, in Marblehead, Massachusetts, the daughter of a master mariner, who taught his daughter the art and science of navigation. Eleanor knew how to use a chronometer and a sextant and how to make a sight reduction. In 1841, Eleanor married Captain Josiah Perkins Creesy. The couple sailed together on the ship Oneida in the China trade. Josiah was captain of the ship but Eleanor was the navigator.

Shortly after completing a voyage from Shanghai in 1851, Josiah Creesy accepted the position as master of the new clipper ship, Flying Cloud, built by Donald McKay for Grinnell, Minturn & Co, New York. Once again, Eleanor accompanied her husband as navigator. On their first voyage on Flying Cloud, they sailed from New York,  rounded Cape Horn, and made San Francisco in 89 days, 21 hours, a new record. Three years later, Eleanor and Josiah beat their previous record by 13 hours. That record would stand for over a century. 

In addition to the speed of McKay’s clipper ship, one of the reasons for their fast voyages was Eleanor’s use of an early form of voyage routing.  She was among the first to use the route around Patagonia recommended in Lt. Matthew Maury’s charts of winds and currents, published from 1847 until 1861.

The record passages created a sensation in San Francisco and were reported widely across the nation. Eleanor’s role as navigator did not go unnoticed. From an article in the Daily Californian:

The clipper ship Flying Cloud arrived at San Francisco from New York, having accomplished the voyage in 89 days, 8 hours. This is the quickest passage recorded as having been made by a sailing vessel between the ports named. On a former occasion, Flying Cloud made the same voyage in 89 days, 21 hours. The story of Flying Cloud is exciting in itself, but equally intriguing is the fact that the navigator was a woman – the Captain’s wife, Eleanor Creesy. Remarkable for being a functioning female member of the clipper’s crew, she was also an inspired navigator. Her skills are considered to be a major factor in the ship’s safe and swift passages.   

Josiah and Eleanor Creesy sailed together until separated by the Civil War. When the war ended, they retired to a farm near Salem, Massachusetts.  Captain Josiah Creesy died in June 1871. Eleanor Creesy lived another 29 years, into the new century, dying in August 1900 at the age of eighty-five.