A Real Life Navigator

I assigned this book for E10 to read as part of our study of explorers. The story is about a man who would teach the average guy how to navigate.

In the end, he wrote a book that is still in print today. Dan picked it up from the university library. There are modern navigational additions, but a lot of the original text was kept intact. Up until this book was published, the only people who navigated were wealthy, knowledgeable men and the sources were all British. Bowditch opened up navigation to the average crew member and demystified the process. It was reported that captains loved it when Mr. Bowditch would teach the men because the crew was much less restless. This book was the first American publication of a navigational text. Pretty cool. I should add that not only was there this copy at the university library, but they also own a first edition original. Uh -Dan was not permitted to that one home!

Once again, I used a form from Edhelper to help put together his thoughts on the book. I used this form from the book report section on biography.

Monday at dinner time, E10 will share with us what he learned about Nathaniel Bowditch. Dan read Carry On and he has spent numerous evenings reading through The Practical Navigator. I don't know. Maybe he's trying to get back to his Annapolitan routes.

E10 has also been able to tell us about the navigational equipment talked about in the book as we talk about them in our unit.

Great book to add to the list for your kids to read.