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Chapter 11: What Next?
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Hard Work, Perseverance, and Success
Safety and Responsibility
Risk and Reward
The Growth and Development of America
Courage and Grief
Summary
Analysis
The day after learning that Captain Gibaut has given up command of the Henry, Mr. Elias Derby calls Nat to his office. Nat finds Captain Henry Prince—a man he knows well from the chandlery—there, too. Captain Prince will command the Henry, and he wants to keep Nat on as ship’s clerk and second mate. Nat listens as Mr. Derby gives Prince final advice: the captain must exercise his own judgment at sea, never break the local laws, and never, ever carry enslaved people. Mr. Derby would prefer his ships to sink rather than participate in chattel slavery. Nat enthusiastically agrees with Mr. Derby’s stance.
Although it will take Nat a long time—years, in fact—to realize the full implications of this lecture, Mr. Derby’s words illustrate the responsibility a captain has towards his ship’s owner, himself, and the crew. At sea, the captain must keep everyone and everything safe. Mr. Derby’s abhorrence of enslavement points yet again toward a nation in the process of defining itself; despite the grand words of the Declaration of Independence, for almost the first century of its existence, the practice was legal in the America.
Themes
Nat doesn’t see Captain Prince again until the cold January day on which the Henry sets sail. Aboard the vessel, Prince becomes stern and humorless, so different from the relaxed, jovial man Nat knew at the chandlery that he initially assumes Prince must have had an argument with someone. Mr. Collins, the first mate, give the command to weigh anchor, and the ship sails away from the American coast. Nat’s time on the survey team prepared him for navigating—to a point. It's much harder to take a sighting on the heaving deck of a ship and there are few opportunities to correct if the navigator makes an error. Still, growing up in a seafaring family in a seafaring town has given him a lot of useful background knowledge about life on board.
Nat’s assumption about Prince’s mood shows how much the young man still needs to learn about life at sea. Prince becomes stern because that life is dangerous, and he feels responsible for the security and wellbeing of all the men on his ship—even men like Dan Keeler (introduced momentarily) who don’t seem to return the favor and care about everyone else’s lives and security. Nat gets his first glimpse at the challenges ahead when he realizes how much harder it will be to take astronomical sightings—using a piece of equipment called a sextant to measure the positions of celestial bodies like the sun, moon, and certain stars—on the ship.
Themes
Mr. Collins and Nat split up the sailors into watches. Nat’s picks include Chad Jensen, a sailor he knows and trusts, and Dan Keeler, a known troublemaker. Then, Captain Prince addresses the crew, laying out his expectations and the consequences for failing to meet them. Afterwards, Nat stands on deck in command of the first watch. He feels nervous and unsettled; when his watch ends, he stumbles gratefully below for rest. Then the ship sails into a storm which keeps Nat and the rest of the sailors busy for almost a full week.
As Captain Prince goes belowdecks, the seriousness of the responsibility Nat has accepted starts to settle in. He’s used to being responsible for himself, after many years in the chandlery. But he’s never overseen others before. If any of his men make mistakes, he’ll bear part of their blame, too. Nat doesn’t know why he chooses troublemaker Dan Keeler yet, although doing so points toward one of his deepest core beliefs: that all people are capable of greatness if they’re treated like valuable human beings and taught with care and attention.
Themes
For six days, Nat wonders why anyone—especially a common sailor—would choose this hard, wet, cold, and wearying life. But on the evening of the sixth day at sea, the storm abates, and Nat goes on deck for his watch to find the sky glittering with stars. Their beauty catches him off-guard; they look much more brilliant and clearer in the middle of the ocean than they do on land.
The sea almost immediately reminds Nat of its power—even when it’s not deadly, it’s still dangerous and miserably uncomfortable. But when they reappear, the stars immediately confirm that Nat’s on the right path, both because they allow him to see where he literally is (he’s a navigator, after all) and because their beauty, and the sense of security they give him assure him that the risks he took in agreeing to this voyage will yield rewards.
Themes
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Early the next morning, Captain Prince asks Nat to use his sextant to take a reading and determine the ship’s position. He looks on approvingly as Nat quickly calculates the ship’s latitude (its position on the north-south axis of the globe), then notes how troublingly difficult it is to calculate longitude (position along the east-west axis), especially without an expensive, newfangled chronometer. Nat asks about lunar readings, but Prince explains that they’re hard to get, and the math required to calculate position by them usually takes so long that by the time a navigator has finished it, the information has become useless. Nat disagrees and sets out to prove Prince wrong.
Nat yet again shows off his natural intelligence—and the results of many years of study and practice both in the chandlery and while working on the Salem survey—when he immediately proves his worth to the captain as an able navigator. Then Prince brings up the dilemma of modern navigation: longitude. In setting out to prove Prince wrong in his belief that very few people are capable of the techniques used to calculate it, Nat leans on his own extreme: natural intelligence. But he also asserts, by implication, that with a little bit of education and considerable practice and hard work, everyone can overcome obstacles.
Themes
On the night of Nat’s first attempted lunar sighting, Johnny, the ship’s cabin boy, asks many questions about Nat’s activities. Nat patiently explains what longitude is and how a navigator can calculate it by comparing the time of sunrise on shipboard with the time at a known point, such as the city of London, then calculating the difference. But this requires a chronometer to keep known time. Theoretically, it’s possible for a navigator to calculate longitude by the location of the moon as it crosses the paths of a few, bright, noticeable stars. In theory, it’s not much harder than if one has a chronometer, although the calculations are more complex. Nat even lets Johnny look through his sextant.
Johnny proves to Nat that many sailors—not just mathematical geniuses like himself, who learned navigation on land as a science long before he had much hope of ever practicing it on a ship—are interested and capable of learning the tenets of navigation. His patient, easily understandable explanation of the longitude problem shows that he’s learned Elizabeth’s lesson well—he uses Johnny’s questions to hone his explanation rather than becoming frustrated with the gaps in the boy’s knowledge. And by taking it upon himself to teach the cabin boy—the lowest ranking member of the crew—Nat continues to assert the value of each person, and each person’s potential to rise above even the lowliest circumstances.
Themes
The next morning Dan Keeler asks Nat if he truly let Johnny look through the sextant or if Johnny was just boasting. Nat offers Keeler a chance too, later that night. Within a few days, a small crowd of sailors regularly gathers around Nat as he makes his evening sightings, eager to learn about astronomy. Even the ship’s cook joins the group, observing that learning about the stars makes him forget about his troubles. Nat assures all the men that they can learn, but it costs him time and effort to figure out how to explain things in simple enough terms that even unschooled sailors can grasp them. Every time he feels impatient, he remembers Elizabeth and the parallel rulers. When he finally hits on a workable explanation, one that lights up his audience’s eyes with understanding, he writes it down in a notebook to remember later.
The ship’s cook confirms what Mother taught Nat and what his own experience has confirmed: looking at the stars—considering the vastness of the universe—can make even the toughest obstacles seem manageable. The sheer number of sailors interested in learning navigation proves that almost everyone has a natural capacity to learn and overcome the obstacles of life. Despite his incredible self-education, Nat shows no signs of stopping, either: he continues to learn from those around him (like Johnny and Elizabeth) and to practice and hone his new teaching skills with enthusiasm.
Themes
During the outbound voyage, Nat sees little of Captain Prince, Mr. Collins, and Monsieur Bonnefoy. He dines alone, attended by Johnny, whose questions help him prepare his evening lessons. One day, Captain Prince calls Nat to his cabin and asks the second mate what he’s doing with the men during dog watch. Nat replies that he's teaching them what they want to know. Captain Prince expresses surprise at Nat’s assessment that they can all learn, but he supports Nat’s efforts, if only because they seem to be keeping the crew happier and less restive than usual.
In setting out to prove Prince wrong in his belief that very few people can learn navigation, Nat asserts the baseline capability of all his fellow sailors, whether they’re highly educated, particularly skilled, or starting from scratch. He lives essentially democratic beliefs, which grow from the idea that everyone has the same ability to learn and grow and become successful. And by treating the men as his equals—just as capable of navigating as himself—Nat confirms their dignity. His respect makes them happier and more responsible members of the shipboard community.
Themes
Monsieur Bonnefoy knocks on Captain Prince’s door. He confesses that he eavesdropped and expresses his admiration for Nat’s “magnificent spirit” which, in the tradition of the French Revolution, aims towards “Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!” With a twinkle in his eye, Captain Prince demands to know what gives Bonnefoy the right to claim Nat—after all, the Americans started the business of revolting against despotic kings. An embarrassed Bonnefoy, missing the joke, lapses into French and Nat answers him in that language. A surprised and impressed Prince demands to know what other secret knowledge Nat possesses.
Monsieur Bonnefoy connects Nat’s educational attempts directly to the nascent project of democracy at the turn of the 19th century—the new idea that all people were created equal and should have the same rights and opportunities that were once accorded only to the highest-ranking members of society. Nat’s humble background informs his belief, because he’s lived the democratic ideal: despite his lowly background, his hard work at the chandlery and his commitment to his education bring him eventual rewards. He’s more widely educated than most men of his time, and certainly more widely educated than the captain himself, who can navigate but can’t speak French.
Themes
Three months’ sail out of Salem, the Henry reaches—and doubles (goes around)—the Cape of Good Hope, where she runs into more bad weather. Then one night in early May, Nat gets an especially good lunar reading which places the ship 61 miles farther east than they had previously thought. This will put them at the Isle of Bourbon by the morning of the 8th at present speed. Captain Prince doesn’t trust Nat’s calculations, but sure enough, early on the morning of the 8th, the lookout calls “Land, ho-o-o-o-o-o” and Prince concedes that Nat can work a lunar.
The first test of Nat’s navigational skill comes when his lunar reading disagrees with the captain’s dead reckoning (calculating the ship’s position by calculating its average speed and using this to convert the time since its last known position into mileage). Because dead reckoning is the traditional method, most seamen (including Prince) trust it more than Nat’s method. But Nat proves the accuracy of his scientific calculations, and this promises better, safer navigation for all who can learn the method.
Themes
