The Sea Captain’s WifeBy Beth PowningKnopf367 pp.; $32Review by Katherine GovierThe Sea Captain’s Wife is a novel inspired by the “brave and little-known” women who took to the seas with their captain-husbands in the last days of the “age of sail” in the second half of the 19th century. It benefits from the author’s extensive research and wonderful powers of evocation. “The ship was festooned with birds, dozens of gulls beading the yards beneath the spread sails, which were patterned like crazy quilts with squares and lines and zigzags of blue denim and black wool, odd bits of tartan, flowered gingham and red flannel. The gulls ruffled their neck feathers and shrugged, taking small steps to one side or the other, claiming their space or consolidating their comfort, all the while glancing downward with heartless eyes …”Beth Powning is the author of The Hatbox Letters and Shadow Child. She clearly knows the sea, and New Brunswick is her territory: She lives near Sussex, N.B., in an 1870s farmhouse with her husband, artist Peter Powning. Her latest book is an elegant piece of writing, even if the plot is somewhat melodramatic. It is swashbuckling, it is heart-rending and readers will shed tears. I enjoyed the novel. However, at times it required me to suspend my disbelief more than I was willing.Azuba Galloway is a spirited young woman who marries the older merchant sea captain, Nathaniel. Unwilling to have him away at sea for most of their married life, and anxious to see far shores, she extracts a promise that he will take her with him. Nathaniel reneges. However, while he is away on a voyage, she becomes a topic of gossip for overnighting on a picnic (caught by the tide) with the vicar. The next time, Nathaniel reluctantly takes her along. Azuba, and child Carrie are loaded from a rowboat in Whelan’s Cove, N.B., and hauled on to the weather deck along with barrels of coal and crates of chicken. Nathaniel has drawn a line across the deck. “You’ll never again cross that line.”It is October 1862. It will be three years before Azuba, her husband and her child see that shore again. His ship, The Traveller, visits London, rounds Cape Horn, stops at the Chincha Islands (to pick up a load of guano), visits San Francisco and goes back to Europe. Then it sets out for Hong Kong.It is quite the journey. Mishap follows misfortune follows wild coincidence: The family endures hideous storms at the Cape, half-starvation in the Doldrums and bears witness to a mass suicide of slaves at the guano islands. The marriage is tested further by a chance encounter in Antwerp with the vicar, who has given up his vocation. The pirate attack and mutism are still to come. Powning imagines the relations between husband and wife very well. “I am your captain and this is my ship,” is only the beginning.  Nathaniel is a man raised without women, in a world where he has total power and lives in solitude, suddenly saddled with a woman who wants to be heard and a little girl for whose safety he fears. Azuba herself begins as a believable character but fails to develop. The dominant sea captain becomes more than a man with a job to do, and something of a metaphor for those dominant men who cannot listen to anyone, man or woman. He therefore will suffer the consequences of his pride, just as Mr. Rochester does in Jane Eyre, just as all those dark brooding men do in women’s romantic fiction.Powning has opened up a fascinating bit of history. Other sea captains’ wives encountered along the journey illustrate what types of woman could prosper in these lives — the managerial, the tough-as-nails, the matter-of-fact slattern. “Oh Mrs. Bradstock! Have you met any of those women? Seen their skin? Observed their manners? And think of what we read in the papers …”Azuba, a well-brought-up young lady from New Brunswick who loves her husband and imagined she could live as his equal, sees she does not fit, and both husband and wife are destined for disappointment.The details of sailing are impeccably drawn: In particular, the description of the loading of the guano, and the deaths from infections and inhalation of the pestilent stuff, are new to me and gripping. But the story itself wobbles between being predictable and straining credibility. We know she’ll get pregnant: Why is it such a surprise to husband and wife? We know that something bad will happen to the cabin boy who is their favourite, simply because he is their favourite. And do we really have to end up with Azuba at the wheel?• Katherine Govier’s new novel The Ghost Brush (HarperCollins) will be published in May.