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Chapter 19: Strange Sailing Orders
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
A month out of Boston and the Astrea looks and sails like her old self, but Nat still worries about the sullen mood among the sailors. And he’s certain that one, Lupe Sanchez, has been lurking around him dangerously, despite his wide smile. Finally, one night, Lupe approaches Nat as Nat’s taking a lunar sighting. When Lupe holds out his hand, Nat can see the flash of a knife blade in it. In broken English, Lupe stammers that he’s been trying for weeks to work up the courage to ask Nat to teach him how to navigate. In exchange, he will teach Nat how to throw the knife and defeat his enemies and how to sing serenades that will win him a wife. Nat laughs and asks Lupe if he found serenades useful. Lupe replies that his lady’s brothers won’t let her marry a common sailor. That’s why he wants to learn.
Despite his concerns, it seems that Nat has chosen to treat the Astrea’s new crew with the same equality and respect he has treated every other crew. While he doesn’t initially trust that his approach works, Sanchez’s request for lessons proves that it does. No matter how rugged a person might seem to be, Sanchez’s conversion suggests that a person with dignity helps them to develop the self-respect that can help them to succeed and, by extension, to contribute to the welfare of the collective crew or community.
Themes
Nat agrees, although he finds his job much harder on this voyage: neither Lupe nor any of the other men know much more than very simple addition and subtraction on their fingers. But by working with them, he slowly realizes that if he just calculated out the necessary tables, anyone would be able to take a lunar reading and use it to determine position with nothing more than simple addition and subtraction. The Astrea’s new second mate hardly believes that Nat can teach the sailors to do the complicated work of navigation, and he resents the idea that they would know more than their superior officers, like himself. Nat takes on the second mate’s education, too, and by the time the ship reaches Batavia everyone—including the testy second mate—has become an able navigator.
Not only does this crew challenge Nat’s belief in the inherent dignity and equality of all people, but it also challenges his teaching method and his belief that anyone can learn to navigate a ship at sea. But his hard work with the crew pays off when he realizes that he can, in fact, simplify the complex art of navigation even more than he already has. Mr. Towsen’s reaction reflects the old hierarchies which democracy challenges: he used to lean on his superior rank to derive a sense of self-worth in comparison to the other sailors. If they can do his job better than him, he loses his sense of superiority. In response, Nat offers to teach the second mate, too, helping him to earn his spot on the crew even more fully and proving that no class or rank makes one man inherently superior to another.
Themes
On the voyage, Nat finally gives up on correcting Moore’s tables, after he finds his 8,000th error. He complains about the mess to Captain Prince and declares his intent to write his own book which will have no errors; explain every necessary detail of sailing knowledge; and come with tables so precise that any seaman can solve any problem in navigation, even if he can only add with his fingers. Prince stares at Nat for a long moment, then tells him to carry on with his plans.
Initially, Nat felt responsible for correcting the navigational texts that everyone else used, but eventually he realizes that his path has been leading him to writing his own work. The audacity of his plan—to make the complex art of navigation accessible to the least-educated sailor—astonishes Prince, but it points toward a very American project. Nat wants to democratize navigation in the same way that the Revolution democratized the country’s government, opening it to more and more people’s participation.
Themes
When the crew finally reaches Batavia, they discover that they can buy no coffee. The ship’s new owners sent her without any goods for sale, too, so the trip appears entirely wasted—until Nat suggests that they defy the odds and make their way up the Sunda Strait towards Manila in hopes of purchasing coffee there. Despite the unfavorable weather and difficult problems of navigation—which, to Nat, are just a simple matter of mathematics—they make it to Manila, although it takes them several months. The other captains in Manila harbor find it hard to believe that the Astrea came from the west to the east at this time of year, since that requires specialized navigational know-how, like taking lunars. And they find it harder to believe that every man aboard the Astrea can not only take a lunar but work its calculations as well.
The Astrea’s owners took a huge risk in sending an empty ship across the ocean to buy coffee, a risk that would have failed to pay off if the ship were under the guidance of anyone other than Prince and Nat. Sometimes, a little extra hard work and practical knowledge can make the difference between failure and success. Nat finds himself no less lauded in Manila on his second voyage than his first; although the passage proves to be much harder than before, it’s not something anyone else would have risked. One crossing at a time, Nat slowly amasses incontrovertible proof of the superior accuracy and safety of scientific navigation over traditional methods.
Themes
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Late in the following year, the Astrea finally returns to Boston. Every landlubber who made the voyage has been transformed into an able seaman and a competent navigator. Lupe asks Nat to bring him along on his next voyage, but Nat replies that he’s done with sea life. When he returns to Salem, Lem Harvey’s wife and Zack tell him that Lem and his ship went down on a reef, thanks to one of those not-so-insignificant errors in Moore’s charts. Book sailing, in their opinion, cost Lem’s life. And, Nat discovers, his brothers Hab and William have died at sea, too.
While Nat’s apt navigation makes his voyage a success, Lem Harvey, Hab, and William aren’t so lucky. The loss of their ships points to the ubiquity of suffering in life on earth and rekindles Nat’s desire to write his own book. After all, the fault for Lem’s shipwreck lies not with his navigation or (by extension) Nat’s teaching, but the thousands of irresponsible errors in the so-called “best” available tables.
Themes
