His experiences educating crew members serving under him allow Nat to supplement his numeric tables with information that allow sailors with limited educations to learn the trade of navigation. In his duties as a navigator, he discovers that many of the references available contain dangerous errors, and he is compelled to compile a new book of navigational data. Numerous voyages take him to ports around the world and sometime into brushes with the wars being fought by the newly founded United States. Upon the fulfillment of his servitude, he takes a job as a surveyor, which quickly evolves into a career as an officer and supercargo on various merchant ships. Determined to continue his education, he uses his nine years as a clerk to teach himself subjects such as trigonometry, calculus, Latin, and French. Even that sacrifice is not enough, and his family contracts him into indentured servitude at a chandlery.

He dreams of someday attending Harvard University but is forced by his family's financial hardships to quit school and work in his father's cooperage. In Revolutionary War–era Salem, Massachusetts, a young Nat Bowditch, a young member of a sea-faring family, astounds his schoolteacher with his talent for mathematics.

It is an epic tale of adventure and learning. The book is a children's biography of Nathaniel Bowditch, a sailor and mathematician who published the mammoth and comprehensive reference work for seamen: The American Practical Navigator. Bowditch is a novel by Jean Lee Latham that was awarded the Newbery Medal in 1956.

Carry on mr bowditch by jean lee latham