Nathaniel Bowditch was born on March 26, 1773, in the town of Salem, Massachusetts, the son of Habakkuk Bowditch, a poor cooper who later turned to the sea as his business ashore dwindled. The house of Nathaniel’s birth is still standing today in fairly good condition at the foot of a small alley known as Kimball Court. The court runs off Brown Street and in the time of Bowditch, Kimball Court was known as Brown Court. He was the fourth in a family of two girls and four boys. When Nathaniel was three years old his father moved the family to Danvers, a small town a few miles away, and there the father worked at his trade until the outbreak of the Revolution, when his business failed and he went to sea.
Young Nathaniel at a very early age attended a small wooden school located in the village, but at the age of seven the family moved back to Salem and he went to a school conducted by a Mr. Watson. He was in school but a few years when his father grew even poorer, and at the age of ten years and three months Nathaniel was obliged to leave school to serve an apprenticeship in a firm of ship chandlers by the name of Ropes and Hodges. Even at this age he was much interested in mathematics and availed himself of every opportunity to study and read books on the subject. At work, every spare moment found him in some corner studying. He read everything that he could secure on the works of Sir Isaac Newton and at this young age started to study Latin. Judge Ropes of Salem had quite an extensive library which he put at the disposal of the boy, and at the age of fourteen Bowditch was making a special study of navigation and astronomy. During this year he made several crude instruments and actually wrote an almanac which remained in his library as long as he lived, and is still in the Bowditch Library in Boston. Dr. Bently and Dr. Prince, both clergymen of Salem, did much to assist in his education by lending him numerous books.
During the Revolution a Dr. Kirwan, an Irishman, put a great part of his own personal library on board a vessel sailing across the Irish Channel. On the voyage the vessel was seized by a Beverly privateer and brought back into the port of Beverly, Massachusetts, where these books were unloaded, taken to Salem, and sold at public auction. They were used as a public library, known at the time as the Philosophical Library, and Bowditch soon became acquainted with many books that he had never before read. He found much to hold his interest and, busily engaged in reading and making copies of the many articles and texts that interested him, before long he had quite a library of his own made up of various data that he had copied from these fine books.
Between the ages of fourteen and eighteen he studied Latin and algebra very seriously. At nineteen he studied French from a native Frenchman, offering to teach English in exchange for French. About this time the firm of Ropes and Hodges went out of business and young Nathaniel was obliged to seek employment elsewhere, going to work for Samuel C. Ward, another ship chandler with whom he remained for two years.
In 1794 the town of Salem was requested by the Legislature to have a survey made of the township, and on account of Bow- ditch’s keen knowledge of mathematics and the compass he was made assistant to Captain Gibaut and Dr. Bently, who were appointed by the Selectmen of the town to do the job. For his share of the work he received the sum of $135.
Late in the summer of 1794 he had the desire to go to sea and signed on board a Salem vessel as clerk under a Captain Prince as master. The vessel was owned by Mr. Derby, a rich Salem merchant. On January 11, 1795, Bowditch (aged 21) left Salem Harbor on board the ship Henry for a trip to the East Indies by way of the Cape of Good Hope. All through this voyage he kept an accurate journal, one entry of which reads as follows:
February 7, 1795, at 10:00 a.m. spoke a ship, 25 days out of Liverpool bound for Africa. We discovered her this morning just before sunrise and supposed her to be a frigate.
Discovering the vessel to be a negro slave ship, he thus writes,
God grant that the detestable traffic which she pursues may soon cease, and that the tawny sons of Africa may be permitted quietly to enjoy the blessings of liberty in their native land.
During this voyage he availed himself of every opportunity to study navigation under Captain Prince and to make as many observations as possible of heavenly bodies and their movements. On January 11, 1796, the Henry dropped anchor in Salem Harbor having completed her voyage of just one year.
Bowditch was ashore but a short time when he started out on his second voyage under the same Captain Prince. This time he left on March 26, 1796, and sailed for ports in Spain, Portugal, Java, the coast of Borneo, and the Philippines. As before, he spent much time in studying and gathering all possible information relative to the subjects in which he was so much interested. On the afternoon of May 22, 1797, he arrived again in Salem after having been halfway around the world in 14 months. On this voyage he had engaged in considerable trading on his own and had accumulated quite a bit of money. This time ashore he decided that he would remain and seriously considered getting married and settling down to a business in Salem. On March 25, 1798, he married a very lovely and intelligent young woman by the name of Elizabeth Boardman. He remained ashore with her until August of the same year when he once more felt the urge to return to the sea to provide a better income for his bride. It was with great grief that they parted but she urged him to do what he thought best, and late in the month he sailed as supercargo for the same owner under the same skipper. This was the last time that he saw his young wife, for while her husband was away on this voyage she died at the age of 18.
On this voyage the vessel headed straight for Cadiz. On September 19, after one month at sea, they sighted the Spanish shore and about seven o’clock the following morning they discovered the English fleet under the command of Earl St. Vincent. Later on the same day they ran in with an American war vessel who warned them of many French privateers in the Straits. An entry in the well-kept journal of Mr. Bowditch reads:
On Thursday afternoon, twentieth of September, the winds continued light and variable to the westward. Captain Prince steered directly for Earl St. Vincent’s fleet, and at 2:00 p.m. the Hector of 70 guns, Captain Camel, sent her Lieutenant on board, ordering us to bear down to him. Captain Prince went aboard, was treated politely, and received a passport to enter Cadiz.
They dropped anchor in the harbor the following day at four in the afternoon. On September 29, 1798, word reached Bowditch of the destruction of the French fleet in the Mediterranean by Lord Nelson.
While at Cadiz he visited the observatory with Count Mallevante, who likewise was much interested in astronomy, and Bowditch agreed upon returning to America to send the Count several publications on the subject which he much desired. While at anchor in the harbor of Cadiz word came to him from another Salem vessel that his young wife had died. During this trip the Salem vessels sailed the Mediterranean under British convoy and were in constant danger, but even in such surroundings Bowditch was interested only in his studying, much to the amusement of the captain.
His next voyage was made in the ship Astrea, owned by a Boston merchant but with Captain Prince of Salem as master. This time they sailed on July 23, 1799, arriving at Batavia, the chief city on the island of Java, on December 17. From there the vessel cruised the China Sea and put in at Manila. On September 2, a ship spoke them at sea telling them of the death of George Washington. On this occasion Bowditch entered in his journal:
Thus has finished the career of that illustrious man, that great general, that consummate statesman, that elegant writer, that real patriot, that friend of his country and to all mankind.
Bowditch had much to do on this voyage. On his other trips and while on shore he had made quite a study of a number of volumes published on navigation, among them one in particular which was much in use at the time, a volume published by a London firm and written by Hamilton Moore. In studying it carefully he discovered many mistakes in its tables (some 8,000 in all) and many misstatements which he believed to have been to blame for many shipwrecks. This book had been republished in America in 1798 by Mr. Edmund Blunt of Newburyport, Massachusetts, who was about to get out a second edition but hearing that Mr. Bowditch had found much wrong with the present edition he asked to confer with him. Mr. Blunt finally prevailed upon Bowditch to take several copies of Moore’s Navigator along with him on this trip to study and upon his return he would get out a new third edition, containing all of Bowditch’s corrections. All through this voyage Bowditch was busily at work checking tables and statements and found so many of them in error that he decided it was useless to try to correct them all and made up his mind to write a complete new book of his own. Much of his spare time was now spent on this work. Upon arriving home from this voyage he was determined again that he would now remain ashore and settle down.
On September 28, 1800, he married his second wife, his cousin Mary Ingersoll, who lived with him 34 years and was a great inspiration in his work. For two years after his last voyage Bowditch was a merchant in Salem, and on July 14, 1802, purchased one-sixth of a small schooner and its cargo, amounting to $911. During this time ashore he was appointed to many positions of trust in the community, including membership on the school committee of Salem and the secretary-ship of the East India Marine Society, the purpose of which was to assist in the relief of families of deceased seamen and the further promotion of the art of navigation. To be eligible for membership one must have been around Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope as a master or supercargo. Bowditch became a very active member of this society and contributed much to its cause and work.
He was now putting in more work on his book and conferred from time to time with Mr. Blunt, with the result that in 1802 instead of there being a third edition of Moore’s Navigator published, Bowditch came out with the first edition of his American Practical Navigator, published under his own name with Mr. Blunt as the proprietor. Bowditch was 29 years of age at the time. This volume soon replaced Moore’s book in the United States and in a short time found its way to England and other foreign countries.
At the time of its publication the East India Marine Society of Salem appointed a committee to thoroughly investigate its contents and the committee submitted a report recommending its use to ship captains and seamen. The original manuscript of this report is now in the Peabody Marine Museum of Salem, along with the original manuscript tables computed by Bowditch and used in this first edition.
Before his death in 1838 he had lived to see ten editions of his book come off the press, representing over 30,000 copies. Some thirty odd editions were published before the government took it over and published it through the Hydrographic Office. The Peabody Museum has in its possession copies from eighteen of the early editions.
During September of 1802 Bowditch with three other men from Salem purchased the ship Putnam recently built in Danvers, and on November 21 she sailed with a valuable cargo under the command of Nathaniel Bowditch himself, this time sailing from Beverly and heading directly to the Indian Ocean by way of the Cape of Good Hope. On this voyage Bowditch assigned duties to his various officers in such a way as to leave himself much free time in which to complete several works already started by him. His outstanding piece of work on this voyage was the translating from French into English of the Mecanique Celeste by the French mathematician La Place.
On May 2, 1803, he arrived at the Pepper Island and on August 31 sailed from Sumatra for home, the last time from any foreign port. The middle of December of the same year the vessel reached Nantucket Shoals after a most uncomfortable voyage, and through a masterful piece of navigating in the fog, rain, and snow Bowditch brought his vessel to anchor behind Baker’s Island at the entrance to the harbor of Beverly on Christmas Day. This voyage ended his career as a sailor after serving the sea for eight years.
With the publishing of his Practical Navigator and the popularity he was gaining on shore, honors were being bestowed upon him. In 1802 he was honored by Cambridge College, in 1803 he was offered a professorship in mathematics at Harvard, in 1804 he was installed as President of the Essex lire and Marine Insurance Company, in 1810 President Jefferson asked him to accept the office of Professor of Mathematics at the University of Virginia, and in 1820 the Secretary of War asked him to serve as a professor at the Military Academy at West Point. All of these professorships he refused because he disliked talking in public. He delighted in offering instruction to worthy young men in private but often declined to appear in public.
Between the years 1800-20 he wrote 23 papers that were published in the Memoirs of the Academy of American Arts and Science relating to observations of the moon, comets of 1807-11, eclipses of the sun 1806-11, measurements of the height of the White Mountains in New Hampshire, observations of the compass, a pendulum supported by two points, and corrections in Newton’s Principia.
In 1806 he wrote and published a book entitled, Directions for Sailing into the Harbours of Salem, Marblehead, Beverly,
and Manchester, and with it a chart. The following quotation from the introduction of this book is self-explanatory:
Thelate Captain John Gibaut undertook to survey the town of Salem, the writer of this assisted him in his observations. It was late in the season when the survey was begun, and the time allotted for completing it was quite inadequate to the purpose, so that little was done in exploring the ledges and shoals. A few soundings were taken in the passing from one island to another, but none round the ledges to determine their extent. From these imperfect materials, a chart on a large scale was plotted off by Captain Gibaut, but he did not tarry at home long enough to reduce it to the scale prescribed by the legislature. This afterwards was done by the Rev. Mr. Bently who had assisted several days in the survey and took other observations toward completing it.
In the year 1804 the writer of this, assisted by Mr. George Burchmore, undertook to complete the chart drawn by Captain Gibaut; but after taking a few observations it was found that the distances of some of the islands from the shore were too great on the chart by an eighth of a mile. The error arose from the imperfection of the instruments used for measuring the angles, and from shortness of the base line by which the distances of the islands were determined. In consequence of this, it became necessary to make a new chart from observations taken with more precision. To do this, an excellent theodolite, made by Adams, furnished with a telescope and cross wires was procured to measure the angles, and a good chain to measure the distances. With these instruments the bearing and distances of the shore . . . were taken for fixing with accuracy the situation of the islands. Soundings were taken throughout the whole extent of the survey . . . which was above 80 days. From two to five persons were hired to assist in soundings and measuring. From these observations the new chart was plotted off and an accurate engraving of it made, a copy of which accompanies these directions. . . .
Nathaniel Bowditch
Salem, June 20, 1806.
Very few copies of this book are in existence today. There is one in the Boston Public Library and another in the Peabody Marine Museum, in Salem. This museum also has a very excellent engraved copper plate used in printing the charts of Salem Harbor made by Bowditch. This plate bears the date of 1834.
In 1818 Bowditch was chosen a member of the Royal Society of London and Edinburgh and was enrolled on the list at the Royal Irish Academy. He was made an associate of the Astronomical Society of London, the Academies of Berlin and Palermo and at the time of his death he was being chosen a member of the National Institute of France, which had only eight foreign members at the time. In 1823 he left Salem and moved to Boston to head two large insurance companies, one on life and the other on marine. He disliked leaving Salem but this offer was far too large to turn down.
In 1816 the degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him by Harvard University, after which he was always referred to as Dr. Bowditch. In 1829 he was appointed President of the American Academy of Arts and Science of which he had been a member since 1799.
In Boston he became much interested in the Boston Atheneum, a society which today has the largest collection of Washington relics in the country, and was instrumental in obtaining large sums of money for its support.
In 1838 he became seriously ill and was confined to his home where most of his last days were spent in his library and with his children. Death took him on March 16, 1838. His parting was mourned by all in Boston and the Boston Marine Society at the time resolved,
As an astronomer, a mathematician, and a navigator himself, a friend and benefactor has he been to the navigator and seaman, and few can so justly appreciate the excellence and utility of his labours, as the members of this Society. . . . His intuitive mind sought and amassed knowledge, to impart it to the world in more easy forms.
We who today are following the sea in one form or another nearly one hundred years after his death are still using these “easy forms” given to us by this “friend and benefactor to the navigator and seaman.”
[Images]
NATHANIEL BOWDITCH
Photograph of an oil painting in the Peabody Museum, Salem, Massachusetts. (See text, page 84.)
Upper: Birthplace of Nathaniel Bowditch located at the foot of Kimball Court, Salem, Massachusetts. Lower: The house at 312 Essex St., Salem, Massachusetts, in which Nathaniel Bowditch lived after he had returned from sea for the last time. He remained here until he moved to Boston in 1823.
Upper: The East India Marine Hall on Essex St., Salem, Massachusetts, now the quarters of the Peabody Marine Museum.
Lower: The house in which Nathaniel Bowditch spent his early boyhood, located at 123 Central St., Peabody, Massachusetts.