Carry On, Mr. Bowditch
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40 free Carry On, Mr. Bowditch trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Carry On, Mr. Bowditch tells the true story of Nathaniel Bowditch, a small, sharp boy from Salem who loved numbers, lost his chance at school, and taught himself enough mathematics to change how sailors find their way. It has been a classroom and homeschool favourite since the 1950s. This quiz follows the book from start to finish: Nat's hungry childhood, his long years bound to a shop counter, the friends who lent him books, the voyages to the far side of the world, and the manual he wrote so that ordinary seamen could navigate safely. A few questions step outside the story to the real man and to the writer who brought him to life. It suits students checking what they remember after reading, teachers and parents who want a ready review, and anyone who enjoys a good sea story. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches something.
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Q 01Which novelist later made famous the seven-gabled Salem house seen in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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.
Q 02What hides Salem Harbor as Captain Bowditch steers home blind at the end of Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?
Thick fog
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.
Q 03Which college, Nat's boyhood dream, awards him an honorary degree in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?
Harvard
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.
Q 04Which trade does Nat's father take up after losing his ship in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?
Barrel making
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.
Q 05Which disease kills Nat's young first wife while he is away at sea in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?
Consumption
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.
Q 06In Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, Nat teaches whole crews to take a lunar, a sighting used to find what?
Longitude
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.
Q 07Nat's brother in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch joins a letter of marque, a ship licensed to do what?
Seize enemy vessels
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.
Q 08When Nat must quit school in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, his mother teaches him to tell time by what?
The North Star
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.
Q 09Which language does Nat teach himself to read Newton's Principia in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?
Latin
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.
Q 10In Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, the Astrea carries guns to fend off privateers from which country?
France
France's privateers were preying on American merchantmen, so the Astrea sails armed and a seasoned gunner is hired to drill her crew.
Q 11Which author of fictionalized biographies for young readers wrote Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?
Jean Lee Latham
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.
Q 12Which major children's book prize did Carry On, Mr. Bowditch win the year after it was published?
Newbery Medal
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.
Q 13Carry On, Mr. Bowditch opens in Salem during which war, with privateers sailing from the harbor?
The American Revolution
Q 21In chapter one of Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, Nat's good-luck spell needs a full moon and which coin?
A silver shilling
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.
Q 22From which nearby town does Nat's family move back to Salem as Carry On, Mr. Bowditch begins?
Danvers
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.
Q 23Which reference work does teenage Nat compile by himself while a clerk in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?
An almanac
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.
Q 14At twelve, Nat is indentured for nine years to which kind of business in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?
A chandlery
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.
Q 15Which shipmaster first takes Nat to sea, as clerk and second mate, in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?
Captain Prince
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.
Q 16As captain and part owner, Nat commands which ship on his last voyage in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?
Putnam
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.
Q 17Which spice does Nat sail to Sumatra to buy on his final voyage in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?
Pepper
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.
Q 18Nat's book in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch is still carried on every commissioned ship of which service?
The US Navy
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.
Q 19Who looks after Nat as he writes his book, then becomes his second wife, in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?
Polly
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.
Q 20In Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, the Astrea's new Boston owners send Nat to Batavia to buy which cargo?
Coffee
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.
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.
Q 24What is the profession of Dr. Bentley, who befriends young Nat in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?
Clergyman
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.
Q 25Nathan Read, the apothecary who befriends Nat in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, seeks a patent from Congress on what?
A steam engine
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.
Q 26Which skill does Nat spend a summer learning after his indenture ends in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?
Surveying
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.
Q 27Nat rises to supercargo in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch; what was a supercargo's job on a merchant ship?
Buying and selling abroad
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.
Q 28What keeps the Astrea's crew working day and night on a voyage home in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch?
A leaking hull
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.
Q 29The real Nathaniel Bowditch left the sea to run a Salem company in which line of business?
Insurance
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.
Q 30Nat's sea-captain father in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch bears the name of which Old Testament prophet?
Habakkuk
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.