Note 35 — Chapter XV · NATHANIEL BOWDITCH AND HIS “PRACTICAL NAVIGATOR” (1802)

The Boston ship Massachusetts sailed for the East Indies in 1790. She was the largest merchant vessel built in the United States up to that time, and was especially designed and equipped for the Oriental trade, measuring six hundred tons and carrying a crew of eighty men. Winthrop L. Marvin’s American Merchant Marine states:

“In view of the importance of the Massachusetts it is astonishing to learn from Delano’s Narrative that she went to sea without a chronometer, and without a single officer who could work a lunar observation. This compelled her to creep down the coast of Africa, feeling her way along, as it were, by the discolored current. She tried to sight the Cape Verde Islands to correct her reckoning, but missed them, and standing too far back toward the East came near bringing up on the inhospitable sands of South Africa. But the worst miscalculation of all was the missing of Java Head, that great landmark of East India voyagers. This blunder compelled the Massachusetts to make at least fifteen extra degrees of ‘easting’ and cost her about three weeks’ time. If a great ship like the Massachusetts were so ill-provided with the instruments of navigation, it is inexplicable how the small ships of poorer owners ever found their way around the Cape of Good Hope, and through the labyrinths of the East Indian Archipelago.”