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I'm sure many of you have spent hours browsing and shopping for books at abebooks.com. It's a great resource for old navigation texts and references, whether "old" means a nautical almanac from three years ago or an antique text on lunars from two centuries ago. Abebooks is a marketplace for hundreds of bookshops, smaller dealers, and private individuals selling on their own terms. It's a good way to find a good price.

This month abebooks is featuring "Newbery Medal" winning books on its primary web page. The Newbery Medal honors books for children and young adults. One famous Newbery winner, relevant to us, is "Carry On, Mr. Bowditch" by Jean Lee Latham, which won the medal in 1956. I have outlined it in the screen capture below. While I'm still waiting for the movie, which I'm sure will involve a lot of broad humor, I have also read the book.

"Carry On, Mr. Bowditch" is a 'good scout' book. It tells the story of a young boy who does his homework, loves math, and grows up to become a sailor who invents a new method for finding longitude at sea by measuring the position of the Moon. Oh what a good young fellow! And what a clever idea he invented! He is a good scout, and his name is Nathaniel Bowditch. The connection to the real Bowditch is like the connection between Napoleon in the recent Ridley Scott film and the Emperor of France. In short, they have the same names, and they appear on the same historical stage. But both are works of historical fiction. And "Carry On, Mr. B." is just fine as medicine for naughty children. It presents an example of a hardworking student that children can emulate. Other than that, it's a fish story. I bet you didn't know that Nathaniel Bowditch won the Battle of Austerlitz by bombarding a frozen lake with cannon fire? No, really! He did! Hmm... I better check on that. I may have my historical fiction wires crossed again...

Latham's Bowditch book was never intended to be a proper biography. For many years, there was almost nothing that qualified as a biography of Nathaniel Bowditch, and stories of his life were largely Americana legends. He didn't do even a tenth of the great deeds he's credited with, and I maintain that if Bowditch had never existed, and if he and his backers had never published the "New American Practical Navigator", history would have rolled out just the same. The impact of the book was far smaller than the legend, and the best measure that I know of that is the almost complete lack of editions translated into other languages. There was nothing especially original in Bowditch's "Navigator" and there were numerous practical alternatives.

You need to know that "Carry On, Mister B." exists, You need to know that there's no bawdy movie based on it. And you need to know that it's wildly popular with American home-schooling families thanks largely to its traditional style as a story of a "good scout" doing his homework. But there's certainly no need to read it and no call to recommend it for young readers. There are plenty of better books out there for the kids, and for adults interested in a good biography, we finally have an excellent option. It's "Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers" by Tamara Plakins Thornton. Thornton was our featured speaker at a navigation weekend at Mystic Seaport six years ago. She knows her subject and tells a fine story. The book is an excellent, fascinating biography with the legends and myths mostly washed away. Looking for a copy? You can find it on abebooks or on ebay.

Frank Reed
Clockwork Mapping / ReedNavigation.com
Conanicut Island USA

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