73 pages • 2 hours read
Jean Lee LathamCarry On, Mr. Bowditch
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1955A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 22-24Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 22 Summary: "Science and Sumatra"
Doctor Holyoke remarks that seafaring is a lot like medicine. A lot of people would rather trust superstition than science. He tells Nat it will take time for everybody to get used to the idea of sailing by math and science. Nat says that what his book really needs is to be accepted by English sailors. That would convince everyone.
Late in March, a Newbury newspaper reports that Nathaniel Bowditch’s new American Practical Navigator has been sold to two nautical booksellers in London, and 6000 more copies have been ordered.
That summer, Nat is asked to captain a ship to Sumatra and the pepper islands. He would be sailing as captain and part owner of the Putnam. Nat tells Polly that sailing as a shipmaster would give him the final piece of credibility that will allow people to accept his book.
Nat makes a trip to Boston and attends the commencement ceremony at Harvard University. As he is thinking of his disappointment, he hears the president of the college speak his name. He wonders if some relation of his is receiving a degree. He is leaving the audience hall when he hears someone call his name behind him. He turns and recognizes Mr. Moore, the man who once offered to hire him as a tutor for his children.
Mr. Moore turns to his son and says, “This is Mr. Bowditch—the man I was telling you about! The man who got a degree from Harvard without ever setting foot in a classroom!" (221). It turns out Harvard had just granted Nat an honorary degree.
After he returns home, Nat and Polly are in Nat’s study when they hear someone pounding on the front door. Nat thinks someone is “splicing the main brace” (223) (getting drunk). Going to the door, he throws it open and finds Lem Harvey, who they all thought was dead. His lifeboat had gotten lost in the fog and picked up by another ship—the Julius, headed for Sumatra. When Lem learns that Nat will soon be sailing for Sumatra himself, he immediately signs on for the trip. However, he soon breaks his leg and is unable to go
Chapter 23 Summary: “Captain Bowditch Commanding”
The Putnam sets sail on November 21 with Captain Bowditch commanding. Lupe Sanchez is the second mate. Old Chad Jensen from Captain Prince’s old crew is at the wheel. Chad’s grandson Corey hasn’t quite found his sea legs yet.
Nat realizes that he is completely responsible for his ship and all his men. It feels terribly lonely. Nat now understands why Captain Prince always seems so grim on board ship. He thinks of his father and begins to understand why the loss of his ship took the tuck out of him.
The Putnam proves herself to be a good ship. They double the Cape and head north across the Pacific. They survive a typhoon and finally reach Sumatra. On the island of Tully Pas, they find people with pepper to sell. The dangerous thing about trading in Sumatra is that people sometimes attack foreign trade ships and murder their crews.
Nat leaves his men on board the ship and takes only Lupe with him to bargain with the Sumatrans. The leader of the people they are trading with is called the dato. He is very polite, but Nat must be firm in dealing with him to avoid being cheated. He doesn’t dare show any weakness.
They have the ship half loaded when the dato tells them that he won’t be able to supply any more pepper—unless maybe they will pay more. Nat refuses. He decides to fill out their cargo with coffee from the Isle of France. There, it takes Nat and his crew five days to fill their hold, then they head for home.
Nat calculates that they should reach Salem in early November. By December they are still beating their way through the roaring forties. When the storms finally subside, they find they are off Block Island. Finally, the wind slows, and the sea steadies, but now they are shrouded in a blinding fog.
Chapter 24 Summary: "Man Against the Fog"
Morning comes, but the fog doesn’t lift. They continue sailing. Three days later, they still haven’t seen sun moon or stars to tell them where they are. The crew is afraid they will run aground any minute, but Nat is confident he knows exactly where they are. Standing on deck, he fixes his spyglass on the point where he knows the Baker Island light should be. It would be impossible to spot in the fog if Nat didn’t know exactly where to look. When he sees it, he says that they are right on course. The crew expects to drop anchor and stand off until the fog lifts, but Nat tells the first mate, Mr. Denny, to take soundings and instructs the helmsman to set course west northwest by west.
Throughout the night, Nat stands near the compass, holding his watch in his hand while the crew takes soundings. Relying on soundings to measure water depth and the log to measure speed, Nat uses the compass and watch to steer them blind around Cape Ann and into Salem Harbor.
Back in Salem, Polly goes to her window and stares out into the mist. Lem is with her. He tells her there’s no point watching for Nat. His ship won’t make port that night. The only way he could get home tonight as if his ship went aground, and someone rescued his crew and brought them home. Polly turns away from the window, then stops and listens. She runs to the door and throws it open. She hears Nat’s voice calling her name. He rushes up the steps and takes her in his arms.
In the parlor, an astonished Lem can’t believe Nat brought his ship into harbor in the fog. Nat shrugs: they had their log and lead, and he had shot the sun three days earlier, so he knew exactly where he was. It’s a simple matter of mathematics.
Someone hammers on the front door. It is Zack Selby panting with the news that someone saw Nat on the street—the Putnam must have gone down. Lem roars at him to stop bellowing. The Putnam is anchored in the harbor safe and sound. Zack asks how Nat brought the ship in through the fog, and Lem answers by book sailing, of course.
When they are alone, Polly says, “Oh, Nat, it’s been so long!” (251). As Nat embraces her, he hears a voice in the back of his head whispering, “a long time to sail by ash breeze” (251). Polly asks him if it was hard bringing the ship home. Nat answers that it was rough sailing sometimes, but at least he was never becalmed.
Chapter 22-24 Analysis
Nat’s visit to Harvard concludes one of Nat’s ambitions. For the young Nat, going to Harvard symbolizes achieving adulthood and success. Graduation from college provides a diploma—a concrete symbol showing everyone that you have crossed a threshold. That might be particularly important for Nat, with his mathematical mind, who likes everything in life to be as clear and precise as numbers. The irony is that by the time he was the age the graduating students, he already knew as much or more than they do about a wide variety of subjects beyond math and science (An Eulogy on the Life and Character of Nathaniel Bowditch). In the end, he receives external validation long after he has ceased to need it. Nevertheless, he afterward described receiving that honor as one of the proudest days of his life (Memoir of Nathaniel Bowditch).
Nat feels that the adoption of his book by sailors will depend on their perception of his authority as its author. Seamen might very reasonably want some evidence that the author knows something of seamanship, but Nat has sailed on only four voyages around the Cape. If he had at least one voyage as Captain, that would give him the credibility he needs. Symbolically, sailing as captain of his own ship represents the shift from young manhood into maturity. He is around thirty at the time of his final voyage. It is about this age that a man becomes responsible not only for himself but for others. It is no accident that he thinks of his own father at this time. He feels he understands both his own father and Captain Prince better now that he is carrying something of the same weight that broke his father and caused Captain Prince to seem to age ten years every time he stepped aboard ship.
The return journey—in which he steers the Putnam with perfect accuracy in conditions of zero visibility—perfectly symbolizes coming into his own. He steers his course by his own inner certainty, his memory, his measurements, his meticulous attention to speed and direction and distance:
Upon this occasion, he had given his orders with the same decision and preciseness as if he saw all the objects around, and thus inspired the sailors with the confidence which he felt himself. One of them, who was twenty years older than his captain, exclaimed, "Our old man goes ahead as if it was noon-day!" (Memoir of Nathaniel Bowditch)
The last chapter speaks to the theme of becoming a man. From the day Nat learned that he would not be going back to school at all, much less to Harvard university, that has been sailing by ash breeze—educating himself, making a man of himself, making his own place in the world. He has been sailing by ash breeze all his life and has finally come into harbor. Nat’s final line: “Rough weather sometimes. But I’ll say this for it—I was never becalmed,” (251) sums up both this particular journey just concluded and also Nat’s perspective on his own life. Ben Meeker said that Nat was becalmed, but looking back, Nat doesn’t see it that way. He wasn’t becalmed, it was just some rough weather, and he brought himself home by his own effort.
