CHAPTER THIRTEEN

South Pacific, 1791

Pirates and Pandora

It was the First Lord of the Admiralty, John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham, who, five months after learning of the mutiny, initiated Pandora’s mission to capture the culprits and bring them to trial. This decision was not because of Bligh, but rather because a Royal Navy ship had been taken without any authority There were compelling reasons for these wanted men of Bounty to be found and punished: they were in breach of the Articles of War to the highest degree; and further, as England spread its influence across the oceans of the world, it had to be demonstrated to all Royal Navy sailors that any violation of these Articles, even half a world away, would bring retribution.

Pandora was a twenty-four-gun, 500-ton frigate launched at Deptford in 1779. She went into service immediately on the English Channel as a precaution against a threatened invasion by the combined French and Spanish fleets. Four years later she was laid-up and stayed that way until being recommissioned for this assignment.

The captain the Admiralty appointed for the task, forty-eight-year-old Edward Edwards, held the reputation of being an autocrat. He was depicted by the nineteenth-century judge and author Alfred McFarland as being more suited to the protection of the Black Hole of Calcutta than being captain of a Royal Navy ship. This reputation was built on the fact that in 1782 Edwards had mercilessly put down a mutiny aboard HMS Narcissus, of which he was commander. Apart from the sailors who died in the confrontation, six others were hanged and two were flogged so badly they died.

Edwards’ brutal reputation would become all too evident on this mission to Tahiti, when he had the infamous Pandora’s Box’ built on the ship’s deck: a despicable cell-cum-cage designed to hold the prisoners. However, his defence for this monstrosity could have been that he was simply following, to the letter of the law, his orders from the Admiralty: ‘You are to keep the mutineers as closely confined as may preclude all possibility of their escaping, that they may be brought home to undergo the punishment due to their demerits.’

The broad order on departure was to sail to Tahiti, and if the mutineers were not found there then he was to visit as many islands as possible in the Society and Friendly groups in search of them. To assist in identifying the reprobates, Edwards included two of Bounty’s acquitted midshipmen –Thomas Hayward and John Hallett, the last of whom had been the youngest officer in the crew – in the complement of more than 130 men aboard Pandora.

After departing Portsmouth on 17 November 1790, Pandora reached Tahiti on 23 March 1791. Even before she came to anchor, an islander had paddled out in a canoe and climbed aboard, and within minutes he revealed to the captain that some of the mutineers were still on the island, but Bounty, with Christian and nine of his supporters, was long gone to a place unknown. He also told Edwards that Christian had said Captain Bligh was now living in a new colony named Whytootackee, in New Holland, with Captain Cook.

Still before the anchor was lowered, another visitor arrived; the Bounty armourer, Joseph Coleman, swam out to the ship, clambered up the boarding ladder to the deck and immediately surrendered. He then revealed the whereabouts of the mutineers on the island and advised that Charles Churchill and Mathew Thompson had been murdered by islanders. Beyond this, one can only imagine the look on his face when he saw former shipmates Hayward and Hallett aboard Pandora. Next to come to the ship were Peter Heywood and George Stewart, and they too surrendered. Their claims of innocence – that they were forced to stay aboard Bounty against their will, and that they had not sided with the mutineers – fell on deaf ears.

On hearing that the remaining mutineers were living at points across the island, Edwards ordered they be hunted down. At the same time, after Burkett, Sumner, Muspratt, Hillbrant, McIntosh and Millward got word of the reason for Pandora’s arrival at Matavai Bay, they took to the mountains. It would prove to be a wasted effort: a squad of twenty-seven armed men from Pandora were sent after them and soon all were in custody.

Knowing the impact the natural appeal of Tahiti had on Bligh’s expedition, Edwards had to be on full alert when it came to his own men going ashore. He feared the same thing could happen to his crew during this search and recovery mission. Even so, this ‘inhumane’ captain showed considerable leniency when he allowed the wives of the prisoners to visit the ship. They were permitted to visit daily and bring their children with them to see their fathers. Indications were that six children had been born to these couples in the time since Bounty first arrived in 1788 – two boys and four girls. Some of the women at this time were mothers-to-be.

Just five weeks after Pandora arrived in Tahiti all fourteen mutineers remaining there had been arrested, locked in irons and crushed into Pandora’s Box – known as the poop or roundhouse to the Pandora crew. On 8 May the order came to weigh anchor: Edwards’ planned search of other South Pacific islands for Christian and his cohorts was underway.

This ongoing mission was soon shattered by tragedy. The ship’s jollyboat, carrying five crewmen – including the son of Pandora’s bosun – disappeared without trace while they were searching the Cook Islands for the mutineers. Then, not long after this terrible loss, there was another confounding yet highly remarkable incident. A small schooner named Resolution, which had been built by the mutineers in Tahiti and subsequently commandeered by Edwards for Pandora, was assisting in the search when it disappeared with nine hands on board in extremely savage weather when they were north of Samoa. After a two-day search for survivors Edwards abandoned the effort, believing all had been lost. But amazingly, after Pandora had been wrecked and Edwards and his survivors arrived in Semarang, to the east of Batavia, some weeks later, this stout little vessel was discovered there lying at anchor.

In what had been another incredible story of survival, the crew of Resolution had safely navigated their way there after giving up hope of finding Pandora. In circumstances distinctly similar to those Bligh and his men had faced in the first stage of the launch voyage, they came across the island of Tofua – and went ashore. After trading nails for food and water they suddenly found themselves facing the threat of violent attack, just as Bligh had experienced there two years earlier. Fortunately, though, they had guns, so were quickly able to repel their attackers. Then, as was also the case with Bligh’s launch voyage, the nine men reached what to this day is an unidentified Dutch settlement in the Dutch East Indies, but as soon as they arrived the governor became suspicious of them. He believed they were probably Bounty mutineers, simply because they could not produce any identification papers and their vessel was made of ‘foreign’ wood. As a result he placed them under guard and sent them aboard Resolution to Semarang, so they could be interrogated. Fortuitously, Edwards arrived soon after and identified them as his crew.

Captain Bligh had expressed strong concerns about the risks of Pandora’s voyage after she had sailed for Tahiti. He asserted on many occasions that Edwards would not get his ship home safely because he lacked knowledge of the treacherous waters between New Holland and New Guinea. Truer words were never uttered. In fact, it was well before he reached this region that careless navigation and impetuosity, in the form of a compelling desire to accelerate progress towards home, brought about Edwards’ undoing. First, he went close to driving Pandora onto the vast Indispensable Reef, south of Rennell Island in the Coral Sea. Then, soon after, when he thought he was sailing through the Louisiade Archipelago, he was in fact off the coast of New Guinea – a 200 nautical mile error.

Until this time Edwards had applied prudent seamanship in the interests of safety in dangerous and uncharted waters. He was ordering the ship to lay-to each night so it was virtually stopped, but then his impatience took over and Pandora was sailing through the night. By late afternoon on 28 August, Edwards had his ship heading south, parallel to the outer edge of the Great Barrier Reef, while he and others searched for an opening in the coral bastion that was large enough to allow them to sail to the west and on towards Endeavour Strait. At seven o’clock, after darkness had descended, the captain had Pandora lying-to when a check of the lead-line caused concern. It showed a depth of fifty fathoms, whereas only a short time earlier they could not find the bottom at 110 fathoms. The wind was then near gale force from the southeast, and the reef, which was disguised by darkness, became a dangerous lee shore Pandora was being blown towards. Edwards had only one option: to call ‘make sail’ so they could claw their way back to deeper water. But it was already too late. Within minutes it was as if every ounce of gunpowder in the ship’s magazine had exploded, causing a horrendously violent eruption.

Pandora had smashed onto the near-vertical edge of the reef at considerable speed and was mortally wounded. The heavy timbers of the forward sections were no match for the impact: the planks had opened up so severely that an absolute torrent of water was flooding into the cavernous hull. Worse still, with the sails set and a considerable swell running, the ship was being pounded harder and harder onto the coral and was starting to list alarmingly to one side.

When daylight came, it was clear nothing could be done to save her: she would soon sink. Pandora’s boats had been launched during the night and secured to the bulwarks in readiness for the call to abandon ship. It was then a case of saving as many men as possible, but not necessarily the mutineers. Here Edwards’ reputation as an inhumane individual shone through when, having sent some of the mutineers to the pumps during the night in a futile bid to save his ship, he ordered others he had freed to be put back into irons and into the cell. As Pandora began her final death throes Edwards still showed no mercy towards his prisoners. Ignoring their shouted pleas to be released, he simply jumped overboard and swam to a pinnace.

By then the deck was awash back to the mainmast and Pandora was going down rapidly. With the captain gone the bosun’s mate, William Moulter, could no longer cope with hearing the men crying for help, so before leaping into the sea he clambered atop the box, released the bolt securing the hatch and flung it open. That was all he had time to do.

‘Among the drowned were Mr Stewart, John Sumner, Richard Skinner and Henry Hillbrant, the whole of whom perished with their hands still in manacles,’ wrote James Morrison about his experiences as a prisoner aboard Pandora.

About four miles downwind from where the ship foundered, there was a small sandy cay, to which the survivors made their way. Many had been picked up by boats after clinging to wreckage for some time. Later, a headcount concluded: ‘89 of the ship’s company and ten of the pirates … were saved, and that 31 of the ship’s company and four pirates were lost with the ship.’

The survivors remained on this small islet for a few days while the boats were prepared for the 1,200-nautical-mile journey to Coupang. During that time Edwards kept the prisoners isolated from his crew and refused them any shelter from the blazing sun. Despite their best efforts to protect themselves by covering their bodies with sand each day, their sunburn became so severe that they were red raw.

By 15 September all the survivors and prisoners had arrived in Coupang. Some months later they were transported to Cape Town; then on 18 June 1792, HMS Gorgon reached Spithead with, among others, the ten surviving Bounty ‘pirates’ aboard.

With Tubuai off the agenda as a suitable site for Christian and his men to establish their South Pacific hideaway, and Tahiti being a far-too-obvious destination, Fletcher Christian knew he had little time to find an alternative.

It appears that not long after arriving in Tahiti for the second time, Christian learned that a plot to take the ship was brewing among the mutineers who had elected to stay there, so he immediately set about quitting the island under the cover of darkness. Such was his haste that he didn’t even take time to raise the anchor: he had his men simply hack through the cable. He also refused to allow any of the nineteen islander women who were still on board Bounty to disembark before setting sail, for fear they would raise the alarm. Even so, one of them leapt overboard when the ship was about a mile outside the reef and, in pitch-darkness, started swimming back to the bay. The following day, when the ship sailed close to another island, Christian is said to have allowed a further six of the women to board a canoe that had come out from the shore.

Remaining aboard Bounty with Christian were Edward Young, John Williams, Isaac Martin, John Mills and William Brown, along with the man they referred to as ‘Reckless Jack’, Alexander Smith (whose real name was John Adams), and two others, William McCoy and Matthew Quintal, who were considered to be the ‘bad men’ among the crew. Also aboard were eighteen Polynesians, twelve of them women, and a baby girl.

No actual record, including a log or narrative from Christian, was ever found, so there is some level of speculation as to how he came to decide on Pitcairn Island. However, with nearly four months having elapsed between the day Bounty left Matavai Bay, 23 September 1789, and her arrival at Pitcairn Island, which was only 1,200 nautical miles east-south-east of Tahiti, it is safe to assume Christian cruised through the region in the hope he might find a suitable deserted island, but it was proving a fruitless mission. It has been suggested that one day during this quest he found a book aboard Bounty titled Voyage Round the World, by Captain Philip Carteret. In it the author gave an account of the discovery of Pitcairn Island when he was sailing HMS Swallow through the South Pacific on a circumnavigation that took place between 1766 and 1769. Carteret’s description of the island matched Christian’s parameters for a perfect refuge: it was off the main track followed by ships when traversing the South Pacific; it was only accessible in relatively calm weather; it had a fresh water supply, and coconuts, fish and seabirds were in abundance. Additionally, the volcanic soil was ideal for the cultivation of tropical fruit and vegetables. Most importantly of all, it was secure, as its existence was all but unknown to the outside world.

When Bounty arrived at the latitude and longitude Carteret had given for Pitcairn Island, there was nothing to be seen but wide blue ocean. Christian could then only guess that the captain had noted the wrong longitude, so in the hope that this was the case, he set the ship on a zigzag course along the line of latitude, and sure enough, the man aloft scanning the horizon soon saw the jagged, dome-shaped profile of the 1,100– foot-high island – the pinnacle of a volcanic eruption countless centuries earlier – becoming defined in the haze ahead. Telescopes quickly locked onto the object and the sighting was confirmed. They had found their island. The date was 15 January 1790.

For the next three days, rough weather prevented them from going ashore so Christian had no choice but to cruise around the island, a distance of only 5.2 nautical miles. When the bad weather abated he, along with Brown, Williams, McCoy and three Tahitians, went ashore, and in a very short time all knew they had found their nirvana. Pitcairn Island was beyond their wildest dreams when it came to being totally isolated from the rest of the world – in fact, unbeknown to them, they were about to establish one of the most remote human habitats on earth.

Bounty was then guided into the relatively calm waters of what is now known as Bounty Bay, and from there all the livestock, plants and equipment plus personal possessions were transported to the rocky and rugged shore and moved to safe ground. With that done they decided they should sever all ties with civilisation by scuttling the ship – a decision influenced by their firm belief that if they left it at anchor, there was a chance that a passing vessel would one day recognise it and stop there. This was a risk they could not afford to take.