Identifying Tom, Dick and Harry

Which members of the crew may have been below decks at the time of Pandora's wrecking?

Although Tom, Dick and Harry could be Bounty prisoners, it is considered unlikely that they were. After all, from eyewitness accounts it is known that at the time of the wrecking every prisoner got out of "Pandora's Box", except Henry Hillbrandt, who drowned with his shackles on and possibly was also still in leg-irons (Rutter, 1935:127). Besides, as far as Harry's identity is concerned, none of the four Bountys who drowned was old enough to be Harry, who was 28 to 32 years old when he died (Stewart was 24, Sumner was 25, Skinner was 23 and Hillbrandt was 26).

Also, it is unlikely that Hillbrandt remained trapped inside the wooden prison cell for long. Survivor accounts mention that the roof of the prison floated off as the Pandora sank. In fact, according to prisoner James Morrison (Rutter, 1935:128), several of the crew and prisoners used the box's roof as a life raft while waiting to be picked up in the boats! Hillbrandt's pinned-down corpse would therefore have bloated during the early stages of decomposition and eventually floated away. In fact, if still held down by his leg irons in the roofless box, the corpse would have been easy prey for sharks and other scavenging fish. Thus, decomposition would hardly have occurred at all.

Most likely then, Tom and Dick are the two Pandoras who died before the ship sank. Although he did not mention the names of the two men, Surgeon Hamilton's account (Hamilton, 1998:105/6) describes their deaths:

"… She now took a heel, and some of the guns they were endeavoring to throw over board run down to leeward, which crushed one man to death; about the same time, a spare topmast came down from the booms, and killed another man."

This is the only reference to these fatalities, so we cannot be sure about what happened to these two men afterwards. It is assumed that they were taken below decks, to be buried at sea after the crew had saved the ship. Probably to the surgeon's cabin. This scenario can be considered a fairly likely one, as Tom and Dick's remains were found close together in the vicinity of the surgeon's cabin.