NATHANIEL BOWDITCH AND HIS WORK

Paul E. Wylie

Peer Reviewed

Abstract:	Many of us have noticed that one sure way to literary immortality is to write a book that the Navy likes. Then one’s name will appear on successive editions through the ages. I am referring, of course, to Nathaniel Bowditch and to Captain Dutton, neither of whom is in a position to sue. Th ere is a natural tendency to imagine that the fame of Nathaniel Bowditch rests principally on this artificially induced immortality of repute-to suppose that, if it were not so, Bowditch would long ago have lapsed into obscurity. That this supposition is untrue is sufficiently indicated by Bowditch’s biography in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which shows that in the England of the last century, Nathaniel Bowditch was held in respect, as the following quotation from the article may indicate:
Published in:	NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation, Volume 3, Number 5
Pages:	160 - 168
Cite this article:	Wylie, Paul E., "NATHANIEL BOWDITCH AND HIS WORK", NAVIGATION: Journal of The Institute of Navigation, Vol. 3, No. 5, 1952, pp. 160-168.
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