Carry On, Mr. Bowditch

It can be difficult to create dramatic tension in a biographical novel because people’s lives don’t always fit into a simple story. For example, Nat’s story doesn’t have a central antagonist. Instead, like any other person, he encounters a whole series of obstacles.

Nat’s goal is to grow up and establish himself. When Nat thinks about his place in the world, he pictures Harvard. The author uses Harvard as a subplot, a small goal or complication alongside the larger goal. In order to add dramatic tension, the author uses Ben Meeker to embody the danger Nat faces after losing his dream of going to Harvard. Ben is tempting Nat to give up by saying out loud all the things Nat fears. Nat shows his mettle by rejecting Ben and turning instead to Sam Smith who becomes a mentor, telling Nat how sailors solve the problem of being becalmed. They sail by ash breeze.

Nat quickly learns that his own education is not over when he goes to work for Ropes and Hodges. Ropes and Hodges is a ship-chandlery. The original meaning of the word chandler is someone who makes candles; a chandlery was a shop that made and sold candles. Eventually, chandleries began selling soap, oil, and paint as well as candles—all of which were used on ships, so chandlers took to selling other things that were used aboard ships from ropes and marlinspikes to butter and salt pork. On his first day, Sam Smith begins by teaching him who how ships measure their speed at sea. It is all about math and problem solving—two things that Nat loves. Sam Smith is only the first of several men who will take an interest in Nat and go out of their way to help him succeed. Sometimes they teach him directly, but more often they teach him how to teach himself and give him access to the books he needs.

Nat’s experience of education is juxtaposed with other family members in the scene when Nat looks around the room at his family, observing various kinds of education for children of different ages and genders. Nat’s brothers are learning math. Fourteen-year-old Lizza is knitting, a skill that she probably learned in dame school. Girls, and sometimes boys, were taught to knit as soon they were old enough to hold the knitting needles. Some children as young as four years old could knit a sock. Mary, the oldest girl, is doing the more skilled work of spinning, which was a valuable and important job, providing the family with a product they could use or sell. Of the girls, only little Lois is still getting formal education, and she will probably stop once she has mastered reading and writing.

In the eighteenth century, it was common for boys around the age of twelve or thirteen to be apprenticed to learn a trade. Therefore, although Nat may still be only twelve, he has gone through his first rite of adulthood. The arrangement Nat’s father made with Ropes and Hodges was fairly typical—although the length of service was most often seven years. In Nat’s case, his indenture lasts until his 21st birthday, which is when he becomes legally an adult. Technically, Nat could not be indentured without his consent. If he had absolutely refused, the contract would not have been legally binding. Nat, however, saw that his family was struggling and that his apprenticeship would make his younger siblings’ lives easier. Nat’s sons Henry and Nathaniel talk about Nat’s apprenticeship differently. They refer to Nat’s “going to work” (Memoir of Nathaniel Bowditch) for the ship-chandlery or being “bound as an apprentice” (Nat the Navigator) with the emphasis being on the apprenticeship rather than the contract. This suggests that when Nat looked back on his childhood experience, he didn’t see it as being particularly dreadful.