The American Practical Navigator, first published in 1802, was billed as the "epitome of navigation" by its original author, Nathaniel Bowditch. The text has evolved with the advances in navigation practices since that first issue and continues to serve as a valuable reference for marine navigation in the modern day. The publication describes in detail the principles and factors of navigation, including piloting, electronic navigation, celestial navigation, mathematics, safety, oceanography and meterology. It also contains various tables used in typical navigational calculations and solutions, including the formulas used to derive the tabular data. - NGA

The 2017 edition of the American Practical Navigator returns to a two-volume format. This package includes both volumes, 1 and 2 bound separately. The American Practical Navigator, first published in 1802, was billed as the 'epitome of navigation' by its original author, Nathaniel Bowditch. The text has evolved with the advances in navigation practices since that first issue and continues to serve as a valuable reference for marine navigation in the modern day. The publication describes in detail the principles and factors of navigation, including piloting, electronic navigation, celestial navigation, mathematics, safety, oceanography and meteorology. It also contains various tables used in typical navigational calculations and solutions, including the formulas used to derive the tabular data. Many of these solutions can also be found using the on-line calculators located in the Nautical Calculators section of this Web site.

A fictionalized biography of the mathematician and astronomer who realized his childhood desire to become a ship's captain and authored The American Practical Navigator.

The American Practical Navigator, first published in 1802, was billed as the "epitome of navigation" by its original author, Nathaniel Bowditch. The text has evolved with the advances in navigation practices since that first issue and continues to serve as a valuable reference for marine navigation in the modern day. The publication describes in detail the principles and factors of navigation, including piloting, electronic navigation, celestial navigation, mathematics, safety, oceanography and meterology. It also contains various tables used in typical navigational calculations and solutions, including the formulas used to derive the tabular data. - NGA

This 2019 edition of The American Practical Navigator (Bowditch), Pub No. 9, exists to codify the latest body of marine navigation knowledge and practical application. Its publication success is a result of the dedicated efforts of many hands and voices from academia, science and seafaring experts. This edition has advanced from the judiciously shaped recommendations-some comprehensive, some minute, all indispensable-of a multitude of maritime and science professionals. At the same time, it was equally essential that those recommendations be compared, vetted, and applied in a consistent manner and with a clear vision, a challenging task performed in exemplary fashion by this edition's principal editor, Dr. Gerard J. Clifford, Jr.

In this engagingly written biography, Tamara Plakins Thornton delves into the life and work of Nathaniel Bowditch (1773-1838), a man Thomas Jefferson once called a "meteor in the hemisphere." Bowditch was a mathematician, astronomer, navigator, seafarer, and business executive whose Enlightenment-inspired perspectives shaped nineteenth-century capitalism while transforming American life more broadly. Enthralled with the precision and certainty of numbers and the unerring regularity of the physical universe, Bowditch operated and represented some of New England's most powerful institutions—from financial corporations to Harvard College—as clockwork mechanisms. By examining Bowditch's pathbreaking approaches to institutions, as well as the political and social controversies they provoked, Thornton's biography sheds new light on the rise of capitalism, American science, and social elites in the early republic. Fleshing out the multiple careers of Nathaniel Bowditch, this book is at once a lively biography, a window into the birth of bureaucracy, and a portrait of patrician life, giving us a broader, more-nuanced understanding of how powerful capitalists operated during this era and how the emerging quantitative sciences shaped the modern experience.