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The great work of Bowditch's later years was his translation of Pierre Simon Marquis de Laplace's Mécanique céleste, which he began during the War of 1812. The American Academy offered to bring it out by subscription; Bowditch refused. He did not want anybody to be able to say: "I patronized Bowditch by buying his book, which I cannot read." Instead, at his wife's urging, he spent a third of his life's savings ($12,000) to publish four volumes himself. A fifth volume was untranslated when Bowditch died.
Author Berry believes that Bowditch was "not particularly democratic," charges him with having a "quarterdeck attitude toward the common people." Sailors, with less literary standards of democracy, apparently felt otherwise. "As the word of [Bowditch's] death spread from harbor to harbor around the world the flags of ships were lowered to half mast."