★★★★☆ The immortal Bowditch

Carry On, Mr Bowditch

Jean Lee Latham

Even before reading Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, I was aware of the existence of Nathaniel Bowditch, because of the appearance of his name in novels about maritime history, Kenneth Roberts, Horatio Hornblower, Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels. Horatio Hornblower, as a midshipman, studied his Bowditch, and Jack Aubrey, as captain, used it to teach his midshipmen navigation. What I didn't realize until I read Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, was that Bowditch was an American. Hornblower and Aubrey are both English and served in the English Navy. Some things never change -- the English, then as now, were reluctant to admit that any American was as intelligent as any Englishman, or to prefer any product of any American mind over that of an English mind. There is only one plausible explanation for Bowditch becoming the standard navigation textbook of the English navy, and that is that it was markedly superior to any text written by an Englishman.

To be clear, the book we mean when we say "Bowditch" is The American Practical Navigator. How did I not know that that was an American work? Well, no one ever uses the full title. As is customary for popular textbooks, users refer to the book exclusively by the author's name. The American Practical Navigator was published in 1802. In the more than 200 years since then, it has never been out of print. During his life, Bowditch kept it up to date with frequent new editions. After his death the publisher sold the copyright to the Hydrographic Office of the United States Navy, which continued to keep it up to date. It is available in paperback: American Practical Navigator An Epitome of Navigation Bowditch 2019 Edition Volume I and Volume II, or free in PDF form from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (which is what the Hydrographic Office is now called). That's immortality for you!

Nathaniel Bowditch had almost no formal education. From the age of 12 to 21 he was an indentured apprentice at a chandlery. (That's a shop that sells naval supplies.) During this time he taught himself mathematics and astronomy. He learned calculus by teaching himself Latin from a grammar, a dictionary, and a bible, then read Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Now, I will be the first to tell you that learning calculus is nothing impressive. Thousands of ordinary high school seniors and college freshmen learn it every year. But I will also tell you that learning calculus from Newton's Principia is a feat to be proud of. Newton was a genius, but explaining himself clearly to lesser minds was not one of his strengths. We teach calculus now using much better and easier to understand texts. Bowditch was one of the first such.

The Wikipedia page for Nathaniel Bowditch tells this inspiring story, which refers to his fifth voyage, when he was writing what would become The American Practical Navigator.

Bowditch decided to write his own book, and to "put down in the book nothing I can't teach the crew". On that trip, it is said that every man of the crew of 12, including the ship's cook, became competent to take and calculate lunar observations and to plot the correct position of the ship.

I don't know if *YOU* find that inspiring, but as a mathematician and educator, *I* do.

Jean Lee Latham's Carry On, Mr. Bowditch is a lightly fictionalized children's account of roughly the first half of Bowditch's life -- it ends a few years after the publication of The American Practical Navigator. I say "fictionalized" because Latham tells us of Bowditch's thoughts and of conversations of which there cannot possibly be an record. However, she hews closely to the facts. She narrates and celebrates some of the same accomplishments I highlighted: Bowditch's success in teaching navigation to ordinary seamen, and the adoption of his book by the English.

One thing that will perhaps surprise readers is the number of deaths. Although Bowditch himself lived to age 64, throughout his life one after another of the people close to him died. If this were a work of pure fiction, we would complain of the way people keep dying off at random, in a way that doesn't make dramatic sense or serve the narrative. But this was the late 18th and early 19th century -- it was a dangerous time to be alive. People, and especially seamen, could be taken off by disease or accident at any time, dramatically convenient or not.

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch is an excellent story of a truly admirable American. The Newbery Medal is well deserved.

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