Carry On, Mr. Bowditch

Summary

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch is a fictionalized biography of Nathaniel Bowditch (1773–1838), the self-taught Salem mathematician whose New American Practical Navigator became the standard American guide to navigation at sea. It opens in Salem, Massachusetts, during the Revolutionary War, when Nat is a small boy in a seafaring family led by his father, Captain Habakkuk Bowditch. Losses at sea and hard times drive Father ashore to work as a cooper, and Nat, who shows a gift for figures at Master Watson's school, has to leave school to help in the cooper's shop. The family meets further grief, and Nat's hope of going to Harvard ends when, at twelve, he is bound by indenture to the ship chandlers Ropes and Hodges for nine years, until he turns twenty-one. At first Nat feels becalmed. The sea captain Sam Smith gives him the book's watchword: when there is no wind, a strong man rows, sailing by ash breeze. Nat studies in every spare hour. He keeps the chandlery's books, works out an almanac, teaches himself algebra and calculus, and learns Latin so that he can read Newton's Principia, using translations of the Bible to learn the language. Salem's learned men help him, among them the Reverend Dr. Prince, Dr. Bentley and Nathan Read, and he gains the use of the Philosophical Library, a collection of scientific books captured from the Irish chemist Richard Kirwan by a privateer during the war. He also comes to know Elizabeth Boardman and her cousin Polly Ingersoll through his sister Lizza. When his indenture ends, Nat helps with a survey of Salem and then ships out as second mate and ship's writer on the Henry under Captain Henry Prince, sailing for the Indian Ocean. At sea he finds that the standard navigation book, Moore's Practical Navigator, is full of errors, mistakes that can wreck ships and drown men. He corrects the tables, and on the Astrea, bound for Manila, he teaches the common sailors, even the cook, to take lunar observations, against the old-timers' scorn for book sailing. Between voyages he marries Elizabeth, and news later reaches him that she has died of consumption. He finally resolves to write a new navigator, free of error and simple enough for any seaman to use, and Edmund Blunt publishes it. He later marries Polly, receives an honorary degree from Harvard, the college he could never attend, and sails as master of the Putnam on a pepper voyage to Sumatra. In the last chapter, on Christmas Day, Captain Bowditch brings the Putnam into Salem harbor through blinding fog, with no sight of sun or land, using only compass, log line, soundings, his watch and arithmetic, while the town waits for news of a wreck. Houghton Mifflin published the book in 1955 with illustrations by John O'Hara Cosgrave II, and it won the 1956 Newbery Medal.

Top Lessons

• Sailing by ash breeze

  Nat cannot go to Harvard and is bound to a shop for nine years, but instead of waiting for luck he works his own oars, studying every spare hour. The book shows a disappointment turned into an education by steady effort.

• Accuracy saves lives

  Nat is not content to find mistakes in Moore's tables; he sees that each error could put a ship on the rocks. His careful arithmetic becomes a form of care for the men who will rely on it.

• Knowledge shared, not hoarded

  Many captains guarded navigation as a secret skill, but Nat teaches every sailor who will learn, and writes his book so that an ordinary seaman can use it. His success becomes the crew's success.

• Grief and perseverance

  Nat loses family members and his young wife Elizabeth, yet he keeps working and later finds love again with Polly. The book does not make grief small, but it shows a man who goes on without becoming bitter.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Medical matters are in the background but real. Nat's young wife Elizabeth dies of consumption while he is at sea, an ordinary and much-feared death in New England port towns around 1800, before tuberculosis was understood as infectious. The Bowditch family's repeated losses, and the deaths of sailors at sea, give the book a steady undertone of grief that Latham treats plainly and without sentiment. The historical Bowditch later served as an actuary for Boston's Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Company, a link to early American mortality statistics that lies outside the novel.

• Later chapters (between voyages)

  News reaches Nat that Elizabeth Boardman has died of consumption.

• Early chapters

  Deaths in the Bowditch household during Nat's boyhood and indenture.