Only one available!

In Pursuit of the Bounty

HMS Pandora was the Royal Navy warship sent to the South Pacific to capture the 25 men who had 'pirated' the HMS Bounty and cast adrift her Captain, William Bligh. She was built in Deptford (England) in 1779 at the Grove Street Yard of Adams, Barnard & Dudman. The 24-gun Porcupine class frigate and the mission to capture the mutineers was entrusted to Captain Edward Edwards. The Pandora left England in November 1790, sailed around Cape Horn and arrived at Matavai Bay, Tahiti, in March 1791.

When on her South Pacific voyage, the Pandora was carrying a special armament of 20 six-pounder carriage guns and 4 eighteen-pounder carronades. She was heavily laden for her mission with additional crew (officers, midshipmen and able seamen), stores and fittings to man and refit the Bounty should she be found.

Capturing the Mutineers

The Pandora first encountered mutineers at Matavai Bay, Tahiti, in March 1791. Four of them came aboard voluntarily within hours of the warship�s arrival. However, the rest weren�t so easy to apprehend. Several mutineers, whom Captain Edwards referred to as 'pirates', initially managed to elude capture by sailing off in a schooner they had built on the island. Edwards was told that they had little water with them, and would probably soon return to the island.

By 9 April, 14 'pirates' had been captured and brought onboard. A prison cell, known as 'Pandora�s Box', was built to hold the prisoners on the quarterdeck. Conditions inside the cell were cramped and miserable. Some of the prisoners protested that Tahitians had prevented them from giving themselves up. The rest of the mutineers, nine in all, including Fletcher Christian, had already left Tahiti for Pitcairn Island in the Bounty. Captain Edwards never found them. Nothing was heard of them until an American whale ship happened on Pitcairn Island in 1808.

Coming to Grief on the Reef

With 14 of the mutineers captured and safely locked up in Pandora's Box, the Pandora then spent nearly four months searching the South Pacific for the leader of the mutiny, Fletcher Christian, and his followers. Their search took in the Cook, Union, Samoan and Society Islands. However, the search for the elusive Bounty and the other mutineers was unsuccessful.

On 29 August 1791, the Pandora was homeward bound�via the Torres Strait �when she struck a part of the Great Barrier Reef and sank. Thirty-one of the Pandora�s crew and four of the mutineers drowned in the shipwreck.