s wife, he went to Lisbon, where, from a study of
historic MSS., he published _An Account of the Discoveries of the
Portuguese in ... Angola and Mozambique_ (London, 1824). In 1823 Bowdich
and his wife, after some months spent in Madeira and Cape Verde Islands,
arrived at Bathurst at the mouth of the Gambia, intending to go to
Sierra Leone and thence explore the interior. But at Bathurst Bowdich
died on the 10th of January 1824. His widow published an account of his
last journey, entitled _Excursions in Madeira and Porto Santo ... to
which is added.... A Narrative of the Continuance of the Voyage to its
Completion, &c._ (London, 1825). Bowdich's daughter, Mrs Hutchinson
Hale, republished in 1873, with an introductory preface, her father's
_Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee_.

BOWDITCH, NATHANIEL (1773-1838), American mathematician, was born at
Salem, Massachusetts. He was bred to his father's business as a cooper,
and afterwards apprenticed to a ship-chandler. His taste for mathematics
early developed itself; and he acquired Latin that he might study
Newton's _Principia_. As clerk (1795) and then as supercargo (1796,
1798, 1799) he made four long voyages; and, being an excellent
navigator, he afterwards (1802) commanded a vessel, instructing his
crews in lunar and other observations. He edited two editions of
Hamilton Moore's _Navigation_, and in 1802 published a valuable work,
_New American Practical Navigator_, founded on the earlier treatise by
Moore. In 1804 he became president of a Salem insurance company. In the
midst of his active career he undertook a translation of the _Mecanique
celeste_ of P.S. Laplace, with valuable annotations (vol. i., 1829). He
was offered, but declined, the professorship of mathematics and
astronomy at Harvard. Subsequently he became president of the Mechanics'
Institute in Boston, and also of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences. He died at Boston on the 16th of March 1838.

A life of Bowditch was written by his son Nathaniel Ingersoll Bowditch
(1805-1861), and was prefixed to the fourth volume (1839) of the
translation of Laplace. In 1865 this was elaborated into a separate
biography by another son, Henry Ingersoll Bowditch (1808-1892), a
famous Boston physician.

BOWDLER, THOMAS (1754-1825), editor of the "family" Shakespeare, younger
son of Thomas Bowdler, a gentleman of independent fortune, was born at
Ashley, near Bath, on the 11th of July 1754