40 Fun Facts About Carry On, Mr. Bowditch

Which novelist later made famous the seven-gabled Salem house seen in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?

Nathaniel Hawthorne set his 1851 novel The House of the Seven Gables there. In the book, Nat's grandmother says the house was built by an ancestor of his, Captain Turner.

What hides Salem Harbor as Captain Bowditch steers home blind at the end of Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?

Thick fog cannot stop him: watching only his compass and his watch, Nat brings the ship in. His son's memoir of the real landfall, on 25 December 1803, describes a snowstorm instead.

Which college, Nat's boyhood dream, awards him an honorary degree in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?

Harvard announces the degree at a commencement Nat is only watching from the audience. Poverty had ended his schooling at ten, so the honour comes without a day of classes there.

Which trade does Nat's father take up after losing his ship in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?

Barrel making, the cooper's trade, soon claims Nat as well: when money runs short he is pulled out of school to work in his father's shop.

Which disease kills Nat's young first wife while he is away at sea in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?

Consumption, now called tuberculosis, takes her within months of the wedding. Back in Salem, Nat is told that the disease kills more people than accidents at sea.

In Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, Nat teaches whole crews to take a lunar, a sighting used to find what?

Longitude needs the time at Greenwich, and a lunar reads it from the Moon's place in the sky. On one of the real Bowditch's voyages, it is said, even the ship's cook learned to work one.

Nat's brother in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch joins a letter of marque, a ship licensed to do what?

Seize enemy vessels and, once an admiralty court approved, the prize was yours to keep. The brother's ship in the book is named the Freedom.

When Nat must quit school in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, his mother teaches him to tell time by what?

The North Star becomes his comfort as well as his clock. Years later Nat passes the lesson on, teaching the same trick to a girl who is mourning her father.

Which language does Nat teach himself to read Newton's Principia in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?

Latin was the language Newton wrote in, and Nat studies it at night after work. The real Bowditch took it up in 1790, while still bound as an apprentice clerk.

In Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, the Astrea carries guns to fend off privateers from which country?

France's privateers were preying on American merchantmen, so the Astrea sails armed and a seasoned gunner is hired to drill her crew.

Which author of fictionalized biographies for young readers wrote Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?

Jean Lee Latham came to children's books late, after years writing plays and radio shows, and was past fifty when her first children's biography appeared.

Which major children's book prize did Carry On, Mr. Bowditch win the year after it was published?

The Newbery Medal, given each year by the American Library Association, went to the book in 1956. The award note still calls Bowditch's Navigator the bible of navigation.

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch opens in Salem during which war, with privateers sailing from the harbor?

The American Revolution fills Nat's boyhood with privateers and food shortages. When peace comes in 1783, a Salem captain carries the news across the Atlantic in twenty-two days.

At twelve, Nat is indentured for nine years to which kind of business in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?

A chandlery sold everything a vessel needed for a voyage, and Nat keeps its books. The nine years rule out college, yet he never stops studying.

Which shipmaster first takes Nat to sea, as clerk and second mate, in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?

Captain Prince later told how, as a privateer bore down on them, he found the real Bowditch below at the cabin table, calmly working a problem on his slate.

As captain and part owner, Nat commands which ship on his last voyage in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?

The Putnam gives him his only command. Nat accepts it believing sailors will trust a navigation book more if its author has been a shipmaster himself.

Which spice does Nat sail to Sumatra to buy on his final voyage in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?

Pepper fills the hold once the ship has come through a typhoon to reach the island. The real Bowditch's journal recorded how the crop was bought there and in which seasons.

Nat's book in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch is still carried on every commissioned ship of which service?

The US Navy's Hydrographic Office bought the copyright in the 1860s, and the government has published the book ever since. Sailors still call the volume simply Bowditch.

Who looks after Nat as he writes his book, then becomes his second wife, in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?

Polly Ingersoll cuts their honeymoon short after a week, saying they can finish it once the book is done. The real Polly and Nathaniel went on to raise eight children.

In Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, the Astrea's new Boston owners send Nat to Batavia to buy which cargo?

Coffee is the errand, but the crew first hired has vanished with a month's advance pay, so the voyage begins with whatever green hands can be found.

In chapter one of Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, Nat's good-luck spell needs a full moon and which coin?

A silver shilling jingled in the pocket under a full moon was said to bring luck. Nat falls asleep before he can try it, then clouds hide the moon and he must wait a month.

From which nearby town does Nat's family move back to Salem as Carry On, Mr. Bowditch begins?

Danvers lay only about three miles away, and it is where the real Nat first went to school. The move returns the family to the waterfront as his father gives up the sea.

Which reference work does teenage Nat compile by himself while a clerk in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?

An almanac needs the sky worked out years ahead, and Nat's runs from 1789 to 1823. A stranger who overhears him talking about it says he belongs at college.

What is the profession of Dr. Bentley, who befriends young Nat in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?

Clergyman William Bentley drops into the shop to talk with the boy. The real Bentley helped Bowditch gain access to a private library of scientific books.

Nathan Read, the apothecary who befriends Nat in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, seeks a patent from Congress on what?

A steam engine built to run a boat is what he has asked Congress to patent. His idea for a steam wagon fared worse: the Congressmen turned that one down.

Which skill does Nat spend a summer learning after his indenture ends in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?

Surveying fills the gap between the shop and the sea. The real Bowditch helped survey the town of Salem itself shortly before he first sailed.

Nat rises to supercargo in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch; what was a supercargo's job on a merchant ship?

Buying and selling abroad made the supercargo the second most important person aboard after the captain. Nat's gift for figures made him a natural for the post.

What keeps the Astrea's crew working day and night on a voyage home in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?

A leaking hull keeps every hand at the pumps for weeks, all the way home to Salem. On the dock Nat then finds the girl he hoped to marry standing beside a rival.

The real Nathaniel Bowditch left the sea to run a Salem company in which line of business?

Insurance suited a man who could put numbers on risk. He took charge of the firm in 1804, is often called America's first actuary, and kept it prospering even through the War of 1812.

Nat's sea-captain father in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch bears the name of which Old Testament prophet?

Habakkuk Bowditch gave up the sea after losing his ship, a blow Nat's grandmother says took the spirit out of him. The family's eldest son goes by Hab.

Which troublemaking gunner turns into a keen navigation pupil of Nat's in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?

Lem Harvey keeps landing in the brig for brawling ashore until Nat offers to teach him, and he learns fast. Later his own ship runs aground because of an error in a book of tables.

Which Asian port is the goal of Nat's second voyage, his first aboard the Astrea, in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?

Manila is where another American captain is astonished to learn the ship came up from Sunda Strait in only fifteen days. The chapter is titled A Simple Matter of Mathematics.

The author of Carry On, Mr. Bowditch was born in the town of Buckhannon in which US state?

West Virginia Wesleyan College, in her home town, gave her a degree in 1925. She spent six years editing plays for a Chicago publisher before turning to biographies.

The real Nathaniel Bowditch translated Mécanique céleste, the masterwork of which mathematician?

Pierre-Simon Laplace left out so many steps that Bowditch's commentary doubled the work's length. He began reading it at sea, on his final voyage as a shipmaster.

How did the science library that the young Nathaniel Bowditch studied from first reach Salem?

Captured at sea in wartime, the books belonged to Irish chemist Richard Kirwan. Bowditch never forgot the loan: his will left a thousand dollars to the Salem Athenaeum in thanks.

Whose standard English navigation guide does Nat find riddled with errors in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?

John Hamilton Moore's Practical Navigator was the most popular guide of its day, so Bowditch recomputed every table in it. In the book, one of its errors puts a ship aground.

Which Salem body of far-voyaging shipmasters approves Nat's finished book in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?

The East India Marine Society admitted only men who had sailed beyond the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn as masters or supercargoes, so its approval carried weight on the wharves.

Nat's first voyage in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch goes to the Isle of Bourbon, now known by which name?

Réunion took its present name for good in 1848. In the book a typhoon has wrecked the harbor, so every load must be ferried between ship and shore in flat-bottomed lighters.

On his first voyage in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, Nat sells which goods for four times what he paid?

Boots and shoes make his first trading profit. Having learned the island's language from a tutor back in Salem, he can deal with its officials without an interpreter.

Which food does Nat's hungry family sometimes eat three times a day in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?

Potatoes are sometimes all Mother and Granny have to cook as prices climb late in the war. When winter comes, Nat has outgrown his coat as well.