10 Life and Character of Nathaniel Bowditch. 



that on the day previous to their sailing on their fourth and last 

 voyage together, Mr. Edmund M. Bkint, a noted pubhsher of 

 charts and nautical books, then residing at Newburyport, came to 

 Boston, where the ship lay, on purpose to see Mr. Bowditch. In 

 the course of the conversation between them, which Capt. Prince 

 overheard, Mr. Blunt said, " If you had not corrected the declin- 

 ation, I should have lost the whole of the last edition ;" meaning 

 the last edition of John Hamilton Moore's book on Navigation, 

 then in common use on board our vessels. " Why," continued 

 he, " can't you be good enough to look over Hamilton Moore 

 again, more carefully ? Take a copy of it with you, and mark 

 whatever you may find ,• and when you get home, I will give 

 you a new one." " Well," replied Mr. Bowditch, '- 1 will." On 

 the home passage Capt. Prince says that Mr. Bowditch remarked 

 to him, " Now I am going to assist Blunt, and begin with Ham- 

 ilton Moore." When he had been engaged upon it several days, 

 Capt. Prince passed by him in the cabin, and said, " Well, sir, 

 you seem to put a great many black marks on Johnny Moore." 

 "Yes," replied Mr. Bowditch, " and well I may, for he deserves 

 it ; his book is nothing but a tissue of errors from beginnmg to 

 end." After he had been hard at work for some time, Capt. Prince 

 said to him, " If I were you, I would sooner make a new book 

 than undertake to mend that old thing." Mr. Bowditch smiled 

 and said, " I find so many errors that I intend to take out the 

 work in my own name." Capt. Prince closed the conversation by 

 adding, "I think you ought to do so, for the work will be new, 

 and the fruit of your own labor, and will be the best work on 

 navigation ever published ;" a prediction that was wonderfully 

 fulfilled to the letter. 



As an illustration of the dangerous blunders of Moore's work, 

 I will mention a fact related to me by John Waters, Esq. of Bos- 

 ton. He states that in the beginning of the year 1800, he was 

 returning from Canton in the ship Eliza, and that somewhere 

 this side of the Cape (he thinks off the West India Islands,) in 

 taking the sun's declination one day, they turned to Moore's 

 " Table XVII. of The Sun's Declination for the years 1792, 

 1796, 1800, 1804," to which he had appended the remark, " each 

 being leap year.'''' In consequence of thus erroneously malting 

 1800 a leap year, he gives the declination on the 1st of March 

 7° 11', whereas by reference to the Nautical Almanac of that 



