"Smashing her way through enormous cross seas and howling winds the Neptune's Car began to run her easting down. She passed a battered barque bearing Hamburg markings vainly attempting to make westing against a thundering south-westerly gale." Those with an interest in American maritime history would know of the story of Mary Patten and the clipper ship Neptune's Car. However few would be aware of the cursed nature of the ship. The Patten's fateful voyage was just one in the career of a clipper whose travels spanned the globe. Built at the yard of Page & Allen in Gosport, Virginia in the spring of 1853, the Neptune's Car quickly established her reputation for speed. However murder, mutiny, mayhem, plague, disaster, war, death and financial ruin haunted any who know her. The fickle hand of fate was always at the helm and like the oceans upon which the clipper sailed, she spared none who showed weakness! Volume One of the Virginia Clippers.

Sister to the famous flyer, Swordfish, the Gosport was the last clipper built in antebellum Virginia. Coming from the yard of shipbuilders Page & Allen, she started life as a Western Ocean packet carrying timber, to Europe before returning to New Orleans with French and German migrants. The clipper's hold would then be filled with bales of cotton for Liverpool's mills. Ole Virginia Bound records unwritten tales of the states last clipper and sheds light upon previously hidden period in America's maritime history.

While studying the astrological birth charts of all the US presidents, I discovered that those of the thirteen modern US presidents, from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama, all had the natal Sun (the planet most associated with ones basic identity) making an aspect (certain designated degrees between two planets) to their natal Neptune. This was surprising since I would have thought that politicians, particularly those aspiring to the presidency, would have an overwhelming emphasis on the Sun-Mars aspect, but not on the Sun-Neptune aspect. What I discovered in my research was that good politicians are not warriors (Sun-Mars) per se who use the techniques of warfare to muscle their way through adversity. Rather, they are good actors (Sun-Neptune) who are essentially chameleons (Sun-Neptune) operating in the foggy (Neptune) realm of subtlety (Neptune) and seduction, using their sensitivity (Neptune) and charm (Neptune) to serve their intuitive (Neptune) sides to try to achieve their goals. It became apparent that a good politician is excellent at assuming different roles in order to fit a given political situation and move his agenda forward. The Sun in aspect to Neptune is not unusual, but there is no aggregate population that has 100 percent of its members with this aspect like the modern presidents. I was intrigued with this occurrence and thus set out to research their individual biographies to see just how this aspect played out in their lives. After all, it seemed to be almost a prerequisite for being elected to the modern Oval Office.

A quarterly journal of maritime history.