James Bowie was famous for his knife before Texas ever made him famous for the Alamo. On 19 September 1827, on a sandbar in the Mississippi near Natchez, a formal duel dissolved into a brawl; Bowie, shot through and stabbed, killed his man with a heavy-bladed knife, and the newspapers carried the story until every frontier smith was forging copies of the "Bowie knife." He came to Texas as a land speculator, married into a prominent Béxar family, and by 1836 commanded the volunteers inside the Alamo. Illness put him in a cot before the final assault, but the legend held that he fought from it to the end.

W. Britain's figure shows Bowie in civilian frontier dress rather than uniform — he held no regular army commission. A black broad-brimmed hat, a mustard-tan tailcoat over a pale waistcoat, a black stock at the collar, dark trousers, and brown boots; at his belt the sheathed knife that carries his name, a pistol alongside it. He rests a long sheathed blade point-down in his left hand and holds a cigar in his raised right, at his ease. Stand him with fellow commanders David Crockett and William B. Travis for an Alamo command-group diorama, or place him among the New Orleans Greys and other volunteers he commanded inside the walls.

Model: 10065 / W. Britain / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set