Today, March 8th, is celebrated as International Women’s Day (IWD), commemorating women’s fight for equality and liberation along with the women’s rights movement. International Women’s Day is intended to focus on issues such as gender equality, reproductive rights, and violence and abuse against women.
It is a good time to remember a woman who literally charted her own course. Eleanor Creesy, was 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.
Creesy was born on September 21, 1814,in Marblehead, Massachusetts, to Joshua III and Eleanor Prentiss. She learned the craft of seafaring from her stepfather and uncle, John Prentiss. John Prentiss married Eleanor’s mother after Joshua Prentiss died at sea in 1817.
John Prentiss, a master mariner, captained the ship Californian. Locals thought it peculiar that his stepdaughter was so eager to learn how to use a chronometer and a sextant and how to make a sight reduction, learning the skilled and specialized craft of celestial navigation at a time when women were rarely educated, let alone in a business wholly dominated by men. Her dream was to marry a Captain and sail with him on his ship and, and though she attracted many suitors as a young woman, she rejected their advances until she found a sailor.
Eleanor married Captain Josiah Creesy in 1841. and served him as a navigator aboard his ship. 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 remain unbroken for 135 years, until 1989.
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, and his “Sailing Directions.”
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.