Capturing the mutineers
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- Inside Pandora's Box Life in the Pandora's prison cell
The Pandora first encountered mutineers at Matavai Bay on 23 March 1791. Peter Heywood, George Stewart, Joseph Coleman, Richard Skinner and Michael Byrne came onboard voluntarily, within hours of the ship's arrival in Tahiti. The rest, however, were not so easily apprehended.
Several initially managed to elude capture. The day before the Pandora arrived, some had actually sailed off in a schooner they had built. Captain Edwards was told that they had little water with them and would probably soon return to the island.
That information proved accurate, and by 9 April 1791, nine more "pirates"-as Captain Edwards referred to them-had been tracked down, taken prisoner and brought onboard. Their locally-built schooner was confiscated and refitted with canvas sails for use as the Pandora's tender and renamed Matavai.
Captain Edwards was informed that two others-Matthew Thomson and Charles Churchill-had been killed in a feud well before the Pandora's arrival. The rest of the mutineers-nine in all, including Fletcher Christian-had left Tahiti in September 1789 in the Bounty, and had not been seen or heard of since.
With 14 of the mutineers captured and secured in "Pandora's Box", Captain Edwards spent nearly four months searching the South Pacific for the Bounty and the other mutineers. The search-taking in the Society Islands, the Cook, Union and Samoan islands, and Tonga-was largely uneventful, at least in terms of finding traces of the Bounty and the other mutineers.
Several of the Bounty's spare spars were found at Palmerstone Island, leading Captain Edwards to believe some mutineers may have been on the island. Shore parties commanded by Lts Corner and Hayward were mobilised. Five of the Pandora's crew were subsequently lost when the jollyboat launched under midshipman John Sival (to maintain contact between the Pandora and the shore parties) went missing in a storm on 24 May 1791. The boat and crew were never seen again. Roughly one month later, off Tofua, another crew was given up as lost, when the schooner Matavai failed to show at an agreed rendezvous.
Fletcher Christian and the remaining mutineers were never located. They had found refuge on uncharted, uninhabited Pitcairn Island, which lay well to the east of the South Pacific area then being searched by the Pandora. No trace of them would be detected until 1808, when the American sealer Topaz happened on Pitcairn and found the mutineers' descendants. By then only one mutineer (John Adams) was still alive.
Inside "Pandora's Box"
A prison cell was built on the Pandora's quarterdeck to hold the 14 prisoners and keep them separate from the Pandora crew. Conditions inside the cell were cramped, spartan and unhealthy. The inmates dubbed their inhospitable home "Pandora's Box".
Initially, the prisoners were allowed visits by their Tahitian wives, children and friends. They had been allowed out to "the heads" to relieve their calls of nature. However, Captain Edwards put a stop to this when he started to suspect that the prisoners may be plotting their escape by giving notes to the crew, asking them to pass on messages to their Tahitian friends. After that, the prisoners had to make do with so-called "necessary tubs", and were forbidden visitors.
First-hand accounts:
James Morrison (prisoner):
"This place, which we styled 'Pandora's Box', was only 11 feet in length and 18 feet wide at the bulkhead, in which were two small scuttles of 9 inches, and one on top of 18 or 20 inches square, secured by a bolt. When it was calm, the heat was so intense that the sweat frequently ran in streams to the scuppers, and soon produced maggots, and the hammocks given to us were full of vermin, from which we could find no method of extricating ourselves."
Peter Heywood (prisoner):
"We were all put in close confinement, with both legs and hands in irons, and were treated with great rigour, not being allowed ever to get out of this den. And, being obliged to eat, drink, sleep and obey the calls of nature here, you may form some idea of the disagreeable situation I was in."
Surgeon Hamilton:
"The prisoners' Tahitian wives visited the ship daily and brought their children to their unhappy fathers. To see the poor captives in irons, weeping over their tender offspring, was too moving a scene for any feeling heart."