Nathaniel Bowditch - Bowditch's American Practical Navigator

Bowditch's American Practical Navigator

For more details on this topic, see American Practical Navigator.

During his time at sea, Bowditch became intensely interested in the mathematics involved in celestial navigation. He worked initially with John Hamilton Moore's London-published "Navigator", which was known to have errors. To have exact tables to work from, Bowditch recomputed all of Moore's tables, and rearranged and expanded the work. He contacted the US publisher of the work, Edmund Blunt, who asked him to correct and revise the third edition on his fifth voyage. The task was so extensive that 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.

In 1802 Mr. Blunt published the first edition of Bowditch's American Practical Navigator, which became the western hemisphere shipping industry standard for the next century and a half. The text included several solutions to the spherical triangle problem that were new, as well as extensive formulae and tables for navigation. In 1866, the United States Hydrographic Office purchased the copyright and since that time the book has been in continuous publication, with regular revisions to keep it current. Bowditch's influence on the American Practical Navigator was so profound that to this day mariners refer to it simply as Bowditch. Student Naval officers prior to the establishment of the Naval Academy referred to the work as "the immaculate Bowditch."

Bowditch died in Boston in 1838 from stomach cancer. He is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, where a monument to him was erected through public collections.

The statue was the first life size bronze to be cast in America and was the creation of renowned sculptor,

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The following eulogy was written by the Salem Marine Society:

In his death a public, a national, a human benefactor has departed. Not this community nor our country only, but the whole world has reason to do honor to his memory. When the voice of eulogy shall cease to flow, no monument will be needed to keep alive his memory among men; but as long as ships shall sail, the needle point to the north, and the stars go through their wonted courses in the heavens, the name of Dr. Bowditch will be revered as of one who has helped his fellowmen in time of need, who was and is a guide to them over the pathless oceans, and one who forwarded the great interests of mankind.

In the 1840s-1850s, Bowditch's son, Dr. H.I. Bowditch, ran the "Bowditch Library" on Otis Place in Boston's Financial District. It was "free to those who reside in Boston, or in the vicinity. ... This is the library of the late Nathaniel Bowditch, and is almost exclusively of a scientific character." In 1858 the family gave the collection, "which consists mostly of mathematical and astronomical works," to the Boston Public Library.

The Oceanographic Survey Ship USNS Bowditch and the Nathaniel Bowditch, a high-speed catamaran passenger ferry serving downtown Boston and Salem, were named for him, as was a lunar crater. Additionally, a William Hand designed Schooner built in 1922, which is currently part of the Maine Windjammer fleet and sails out of Rockland, Maine, is also named after Nathaniel Bowditch.

In 1955, a book for younger readers, Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, was published, portraying Bowditch's life dramatized and fictionalized. A serious modern biography is Robert E. Berry's Yankee Stargazer, published in 1941.

A grammar school, two middle schools and a dorm in America were also named for him, in Boston, Foster City, California (Bowditch Middle School), Salem, Massachusetts and Salem State College, respectively. The Department of Marine Transportation building on the grounds of the United States Merchant Marine Academy is named in his honor and houses classrooms, laboratories, and the 900-seat Ackerman Auditorium. He also gives his name to a street in Berkeley, California. Actor David Morse was named after him − David Bowditch Morse.