American Practical Navigator


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Carry On, Mr. Bowditch


Book Description

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 Practical Navigator


Book Description

Perfect for fans of Scott Turow and John Lescroart, The Practical Navigator is a smart, fast-moving legal thriller where everyone's motives-and desires-are in question. Membership in the Great Arcadia, an exclusive East Coast yacht club, is pretty much limited to the rich and powerful in 1980s business, finance, and politics. But the sexually charged murder of Greek billionaire George Minot during their annual regatta off the coast of Maine opens a door into a secret world of addictive sexuality and excess beneath the starched sheets of the East Coast establishment. Tim Bigelow is looking forward to spending a week at sea with the magical Cassie Sears, who has suddenly appeared in his life. He's also there to celebrate his older brother, Harry-the retiring commodore of the Great Arcadia who's on course for a major role in the White House. That prospect slips away when Minot is murdered and details start to come out, including the alarming fact that Minot saw himself as a latter-day embodiment of the Minotaur-the half-man, half-bull creature who lurked in the Labyrinth beneath the ancient city of Knossos in one of the oldest myths in the Western canon. From the decks of the world's finest yachts to the beds and boardrooms of some of the most powerful people in America to an electrifying courtroom trial in a dying coastal town, The Practical Navigator steers a course through its own labyrinth . . . a whirlpool of obsessive sexuality, murder, and despair.




Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers


Book Description

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.




GMDSS for Navigators


Book Description

The Global Maritime distress and Safety System (GMDSS) is becoming the all-embracing term for communication and data transfer between ship and shore, and ship and ship. It's a highly automated system of terrestrial satellite communications technology whose primary role is to maintain safety of life at sea. Within the next five years all vessels over 300 tonnes will be required to carry GMDSS equipment. The seafaring nations of the world have together established the rules and regulations for good working practices within the system, and every serving and future navigating officer will be required to hold the GMDSS General Operator's Certificate. GMDSS for Navigators brings together in one publication the knowledge required by anyone who wants to become a qualified and competent operator of GMDSS communications equipment. It should prove to be the accepted universal reference for GMDSS training.