BOWDICH, THOMAS EDWARD English traveller and author, was born at Bristol in 1790. In 1814 he obtained a writership in the service of the African Company of Merchants and was sent to Cape Coast. In 1817 he was sent, with two companions, to Kumasi on a mission to the king of Ashanti, and chiefly through his skilful diplomacy the mission secured British control over the coast natives (see ASHANTI: History). An account of his mission and of the study he had made of the barbaric court of Kumasi, entitled Mission front Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee, etc., appeared in 1819 (repub lished 1873). His African collections he presented to the British Museum. Bowdich publicly attacked the management of the African committee, and his strictures influenced the decision of the British government to assume direct control over the Gold Coast. From 1820 to 1822 Bowdich lived in Paris, studying mathematics and the natural sciences, and was on intimate terms with Cuvier, Humboldt and other savants. In 1822 he went to Lisbon, where, from a study of manuscripts, he published An Account of the Discoveries of the Portuguese in ... Angola and Mozambique (1824). In 1823 Bowdich arrived at Bathurst, at the mouth of the Gambia, intending to go to Sierra Leone and explore the interior, but he died before leaving Bathurst.