Bowditch (Nathaniel) is born in Salem.

The son of Habakuk and Mary (Ingersoll) Bowditch, Nathaniel Bowditch goes to sea as a boy, becomes a ship captain, corrects the existing standard navigation tables in in 1799.* and publishes the standard work on the subject in 1802.* He retires from the sea in 1803, enters the insurance business, moves to Boston in 1823, and lives initially at today’s Winthrop Square (then Otis Place). Bowditch serves as president of the Commercial Insurance Company and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, dies in Boston on March 16, 1838, and is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery.