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VOYAGE OF
H.M.S. 'PANDORA'
DESPATCHED TO ARREST THE MUTINEERS OF
THE 'BOUNTY' IN THE SOUTH SEAS, 1790-91
BEING THE NARRATIVES OF
CAPTAIN EDWARD EDWARDS, R.N.
THE COMMANDER
AND
GEORGE HAMILTON
THE SURGEON
WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY
BASIL THOMSON
LONDON
FRANCIS EDWARDS
83 HIGH STREET, MARYLEBONE
1915
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
CAPTAIN EDWARDS' REPORTS 27
A VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD 91
VOYAGE FROM OTAHEITE TO ANAMOOKA 121
VOYAGE FROM ANAMOOKA, WITH AN ACCOUNT
OF THE LOSS OF THE _PANDORA_ 136
VOYAGE FROM THE WRECK TO THE ISLAND OF TIMOR 147
OCCURRENCES AT COUPANG; VOYAGE TO BATAVIA,
ETC.; ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND 160
INDEX 173
MAP OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN, SHOWING THE COURSE
FOLLOWED BY H.M.S. _PANDORA_ IN 1791
INTRODUCTION
NONE of the minor incidents in our naval history has inspired so many
writers as the Mutiny of the _Bounty_. Histories, biographies and
romances, from Bligh's narrative in 1790 to Mr. Becke's "Mutineers" in
1898, have been founded upon it; Byron took it for the theme of the least
happy of his dramatic poems; and all these, not because the mutiny left
any mark upon history, but because it ranks first among the stories of
the sea, instinct with the living elements of romance, of primal passion
and of tragedy--all moving to a happy ending in the Arcadia of Pitcairn
Island. And yet, while every incident in the moving story, even to the
evidence in the famous court-martial, has been discussed over and over
again, there has been lying in the Record Office for more than a century
an autograph manuscript, written by one of the principal actors in the
drama, which no one has thought it worth while to print.
Though the story of the mutiny is too well known to need repeating in
detail, it is necessary to set forth as briefly as possible its relation
to the history of maritime discovery in the Pacific. In the year 1787,
ten years after the death of Captain Cook in Hawaii, a number of West
India merchants in London, stirred by the glowing reports of the natural
wealth of the South Sea Islands brought home by Dampier and Cook,
petitioned the government to acclimatize the bread-fruit in Jamaica. A
ship of 215 tons was purchased into the service and fitted out under the
direct superintendence of Sir Joseph Banks, who named her the _Bounty_,
and recommended William Bligh, one of Cook's officers, for the command.
It was a new departure. The object of most of the earlier government
expeditions to the South Seas had been the advancement of geographical
science and natural history; the voyage of the _Bounty_ was to turn
former discoveries to the profit of the empire.
Bligh was singularly ill-fitted for the command. While he had undoubted
ability, his whole career shows him to have been wanting in the tact and
temper without which no one can successfully lead men; and in this
venture his own defects were aggravated by the inefficiency of his
officers. He took in his cargo of bread-fruit trees at Tahiti, and there
was no active insubordination until he reached Tonga on the homeward
voyage. At sunrise on April 28th, 1789, the crew mutinied under the
leadership of Fletcher Christian, the Master's Mate, whom Bligh's
ungoverned temper had provoked beyond endurance. The seamen had other
motives. Bligh had kept them far too long at Tahiti, and during the five
months they had spent at the island, every man had formed a connection
among the native women, and had enjoyed a kind of life that contrasted
sharply with the lot of bluejackets a century ago. Forcing Bligh, and
such of their shipmates as were loyal to him, into the launch, and
casting them adrift with food and water barely sufficient for a week's
subsistence, they set the ship's course eastward, crying "Huzza for
Tahiti!" There followed an open boat voyage that is unexampled in
maritime history. The boat was only 23 feet long; the weight of eighteen
men sank her almost to the gunwale; the ocean before them was unknown,
and teeming with hidden dangers; their only arms against hostile natives
were a few cutlasses, their only food two ounces of biscuit each a day;
and yet they ran 3618 nautical miles in forty-one days, and reached Timor
with the loss of only one man, and he was killed by the natives at the
very outset.
The mutineers fared as mutineers have always fared. Having sailed the
ship to Tahiti, they fell out among themselves, half taking the _Bounty_
to the uninhabited island of Pitcairn, where they were discovered
twenty-seven years later, and half remaining at Tahiti. Of these two were
murdered, four were drowned in the wreck of the _Pandora_, three were
hanged in England, and six were pardoned, one living to become a
post-captain in the navy, another to be gunner on the _Blenheim_ when she
foundered with Sir Thomas Troubridge.
One boat voyage only is recorded as being longer than Bligh's. In 1536
Diego Botelho Pereira made the passage from Portuguese India to Lisbon in
a native _fusta_, or lateen rigged boat, but a little larger than
Bligh's. He had, however, covered her with a deck, and provisioned her
for the venture, and he was able to replenish his stock at various points
on the voyage.
In 1790 the publication of Bligh's account of his sufferings excited the
strongest public sympathy, and the Admiralty lost no time in fitting out
an expedition to search for the mutineers, and bring them home to
punishment. The _Pandora_, frigate, of 24 guns, was commissioned for the
purpose, and manned by 160 men, composed largely of landsmen, for every
trained seaman in the navy had gone to man the great fleet then
assembling at Portsmouth under Lord Howe. Captain Edward Edwards, the
officer chosen for the command, had a high reputation as a seaman and a
disciplinarian, and from the point of view of the Admiralty, who intended
the cruise simply as a police mission without any scientific object, no
better choice could have been made. Their orders to him were to proceed
to Tahiti, and, not finding the mutineers there, to visit the different
groups of the Society and Friendly Islands, and the others in the
neighbouring parts of the Pacific, using his best endeavours to seize and
bring home in confinement the whole, or such part of the delinquents as
he might be able to discover. "You are," the orders ran, "to keep the
mutineers as closely confined as may preclude all possibility of their
escaping, having, however, proper regard to the preservation of their
lives, that they may be brought home to undergo the punishment due to
their demerits." Edwards belonged to that useful class of public servant
that lives upon instructions. With a roving commission in an ocean
studded with undiscovered islands the possibilities of scientific
discovery were immense, but he faced them like a blinkered horse that has
his eyes fixed on the narrow track before him, and all the pleasant
byways of the road shut out. A cold, hard man, devoid of sympathy and
imagination, of every interest beyond the straitened limits of his
profession, Edwards in the eye of posterity was almost the worst man that
could have been chosen. For, with a different commander, the voyage would
have been one of the most important in the history of South Sea
discovery, and the account he has written of it compares in style and
colour with a log-book.
In Edwards' place a more genial man, a Catoira, a Wallis, or a Cook,
would have written a journal of discovery that might have taken a place
in the front rank of the literature of travel. He would have investigated
the murder of La Pérouse's boat's crew in Tutuila on the spot; he would
have rescued the survivors of that ill-fated expedition whose
smoke-signals he saw on Vanikoro; he would have brought home news of the
great Fiji group through which Bligh passed in the _Bounty's_ launch; he
might even have discovered Fletcher Christian's colony of mutineers in
Pitcairn. But, on the other hand, humanity to his prisoners might have
furnished them with the means of escape, and his ardour for discovery
might have led him into dangers from which no one would have survived to
tell the tale. Edwards had the qualities of his defects. If he treated
his prisoners harshly, he prevented them from contaminating his crew, and
brought the majority of them home alive through all the perils of
shipwreck and famine. In all the attacks that have been made upon him
there is not a word against his character as a plain, straight-forward
officer, who could lick a crew of landsmen into shape, and keep them
loyal to him through the stress of shipwreck and privation. If he was
callous to the sufferings of his prisoners, he was at least as
indifferent to his own. If he felt no sympathy with others, he asked for
none with himself. If he won no love, he compelled respect.
Of his officers little need be said. Corner, the first lieutenant, was a
stout seaman, who bottled up his disapproval of his captain's behaviour
until the commission was out. Hayward, the second lieutenant, was a
time-server. He had been a midshipman on the _Bounty_ at the time of the
mutiny, and an intimate friend of young Peter Heywood who was constrained
to cast in his lot with the mutineers, yet, when Heywood gave himself up
on the arrival of the _Pandora_ at Tahiti, his old comrade, now risen in
the world, received him with a haughty stare. Of Larkin, Passmore, and
the rest, we know nothing.
Fortunately for us, the _Pandora_ carried a certain rollicking,
irresponsible person as surgeon. George Hamilton has been called "a
coarse, vulgar, and illiterate man, more disposed to relate licentious
scenes and adventures, in which he and his companions were engaged, than
to give any information of proceedings and occurrences connected with
the main object of the voyage." From this puritanical criticism most
readers will dissent. Hamilton was bred in Northumberland, and was at
this time past forty. His portrait, the frontispiece to his book,
represents him in the laced coat and powdered wig of the period, a man of
middle age, with clever, well-cut features, and a large, humorous, and
rather sensual mouth. His book, with all its faults of scandalous plain
speech, is one that few naval surgeons of that day could have written.
The style, though flippant, is remarkable for a cynical but always
good-natured humour, and on the rare occasions when he thought it
professionally incumbent on him to be serious, as in his discussion of
the best dietary for long voyages, and the physical effects of
privations, his remarks display observation and good sense. It must be
admitted, I fear, that he relates certain of his own and his shipmates'
adventures ashore with shameless gusto, but he wrote in an age that loved
plain speech, and that did not care to veil its appetite for licence.
Like Edwards, he tells us little of the prisoners after they were
consigned to "Pandora's Box." His narrative is valuable as a commentary
on Edwards' somewhat meagre report, and for the sidelights which it
throws upon the manners of naval officers of those days. Even Edwards, to
whom he is always loyal, does not escape his little shaft of satire when
he relates how the stern captain was driven to conduct prayers in the
most desperate portion of the boat voyage. His book, published at Berwick
in 1793, has now become so rare that Mr. Quaritch lately advertised for
it three times without success, and therefore no excuse is needed for
reprinting it.
The _Pandora_ was dogged by ill luck from the first. An epidemic fever
raging in England at the time of her departure, was introduced on board,
it was thought, by infected clothing. The sick bay, and indeed, the
officers' cabins, too, were crammed with stores intended for the return
voyage of the _Bounty_, and there was no accommodation for the sick.
Hamilton attributes their recovery to the use of tea and sugar, then
carried for the first time in a ship of war. He gives some interesting
information regarding the precautions taken against scurvy. They had
essence of malt and hops for brewing beer, a mill for grinding wheat, the
meal being eaten with brown sugar, and as much saurkraut as the crew
chose to eat.
The first land sighted after rounding Cape Horn, was Ducie's island;
probably the same island which, as the Encarnacion of Quiros, has dodged
about the charts of the old geographers, swelling into a continent,
contracting into an atoll, and finally coming to rest in the
neighbourhood of the Solomon Islands before vanishing for ever. The
_Pandora_ was now in the latitude of Pitcairn, which lay down wind only
three hundred miles distant. If she had but kept a westerly course, she
must have sighted it, for the island's peak is visible for many leagues,
but relentless ill fortune turned her northward, and during the ensuing
day she passed the men she was in search of scarce thirty leagues away.
One glimmer of good fortune awaited Edwards in Tahiti. The schooner built
by the mutineers was ready for sea, but not provisioned for a voyage. She
put to sea, and outsailed the _Pandora's_ boat that went in chase of her,
but her crew, dreading the inevitable starvation that faced them, put
back during the night and took to the mountains, where they were all
captured.
In the matter of "Pandora's Box," there were excuses for Edwards, who was
bitterly attacked afterwards for his inhumanity. One of the chiefs had
warned him that there was a plot between the natives and the mutineers to
cut the cable of the _Pandora_ in the night. Most of the mutineers were
connected through their women with influential chiefs, and nothing was
more likely than that such a rescue should be attempted. His own crew,
moreover, were human. They could see for themselves the charms of a life
in Tahiti; they could hear from the prisoners the consideration in which
Englishmen were held in this delightful land. What had been possible in
the _Bounty_ was possible in the _Pandora_. Edwards regarded his
prisoners as pirates, desperate with the weight of the rope about their
necks. His orders were definite--to consider nothing but the preservation
of their lives--and he did his duty in his own way according to his
lights. And that he was not insensible to every feeling of humanity is
shown by the fact that he allowed the native wives of the mutineers daily
access to their husbands while the ship lay there. The infinitely
pathetic story of poor "Peggy," the beautiful Tahitian girl who had borne
a child to midshipman Stewart, was vouched for six years later by the
missionaries of the "Duff." She had to be separated from her husband by
force, and it was at his request that she was not again admitted to the
ship. Poor girl! it was all her life to her. A month before her
boy-husband perished in the wreck of the _Pandora_, she had died of a
broken heart, leaving her baby, the first half-caste born in Tahiti, to
be brought up by the missionaries.
"Pandora's Box" certainly needed some excuse. A round house, eleven feet
long, accessible only through a scuttle in the roof, was built upon the
quarter deck as a prison for the fourteen mutineers, who were ironed and
handcuffed. Hamilton says that the roundhouse was built partly out of
consideration for the prisoners themselves, in order to spare them the
horrors of prolonged imprisonment below in the tropics, and that although
the service regulations restricted prisoners to two-thirds allowance,
Edwards rationed them exactly like the ship's company. Morrison,
however, who seems to have belonged to that objectionable class of
seamen--the sea-lawyer--having kept a journal of grievances against Bligh
when on the _Bounty_, and preserved it even in "Pandora's Box," gives a
very different account, and Peter Heywood, a far more trustworthy
witness, declared in a letter to his mother, that they were kept "with
both hands and both legs in irons, and were obliged to eat, drink, sleep,
and obey the calls of nature, without ever being allowed to get out of
this den."
Edwards now provisioned the mutineers' little schooner, and put on board
of her a prize crew of two petty officers and seven men to navigate her
as his tender. For the first few weeks, while the scent was keen, he
maintained a very active search for the _Bounty_. He had three clues:
first, the mention of Aitutaki in a story the mutineers had told the
natives to account for their reappearance; second, a report made to him
by Hillbrant, one of his prisoners, that Christian, on the night before
he left Tahiti, had declared his intention of settling on Duke of York's
Island; and third, the discovery on Palmerston Island of the _Bounty's_
driver yard, much worm-eaten from long immersion. It must be confessed
that hopes founded on these clues did little credit to Edwards'
intelligence. Aitutaki, having been discovered by Bligh, was the last
place Christian would have chosen: he might have guessed that a man of
Christian's intelligence would intentionally have given a false account
of his projects to the mutineers he left behind, knowing that even if all
who were set adrift in the boat had perished, the story of the mutiny
would be learned by the first ship that visited Tahiti; a worm-eaten spar
lying on the tide-mark, at an island situated directly down-wind from the
Society Islands, so far from proving that the _Bounty_ had been there,
indicated the exact contrary. But it is to be remembered that at this
time the islands known to exist in the Pacific could almost be counted on
the fingers, and that Edwards could not have hoped, within the limits of
a single cruise, to examine even the half of those that were marked in
his chart. Had he suspected the existence of the vast number of islands
around him, he would at once have realised the hopelessness of attempting
to discover the hiding-place of an able navigator bent on concealment.
Whether, as has been suggested by one writer,[10-1] Christian was piloted
to Pitcairn by his Tahitian companions, of whom some were descended from
the old native inhabitants, or had read of it in Carteret's voyage in
1767, or had chanced upon it by accident, he could have followed no wiser
course than to steer eastward, and upwind, for any vessel despatched to
arrest him would perforce go first to Tahiti for information, when it
would be too late to beat to the eastward without immense loss of time.
From Aitutaki Edwards bore north-west to investigate the second clue, and
in the Union Group he made his first important discovery of new
land--Nukunono, inhabited by a branch of the Micronesian race, crossed
with Polynesian blood. From thence he ran southward to Samoa, where he
came upon traces of the massacre of La Pérouse's second in command, M. de
Langle, in the shape of accoutrements cut from the uniforms of the French
officers. Consistent with his usual concentration upon the object of his
voyage, he does not seem to have cared to make enquiries about them.
At this stage in the voyage there occurred an accident which, from our
point of view, must be regarded as the most fortunate incident of the
voyage. The tender, very imperfectly victualled, parted company in a
thick shower of rain. At this date Fiji, the most important group in the
South Pacific, was practically unknown. Tasman had sighted its
north-eastern extremity: Cook had discovered Vatoa, an outlying island in
the far southward, and had heard of it from the Tongans in his second
voyage when he had not time to look for it; Bligh had passed through the
heart of it in his boat voyage, and had even been chased by two canoes
from Round Island, Yasawa; but no European had landed or held any
intercourse with the natives. It is not easy to understand how islands of
such magnitude as Fiji should have remained undiscovered so long after
every other important group in the Pacific had found its place in the
charts of the Pacific. They were known by repute; Hamilton writes of "the
savage and cannibal Feegees"; they lay but two days' sail down-wind from
Tonga. Three years before the _Pandora's_ cruise the Pacific had been
thrown open to the sperm whale fishery, which has had so large a part in
South Sea discovery, by the cruise of the English ship _Amelia_, fitted
out by Enderby; and yet neither ship of war nor whaler had chanced upon
them. But for a meagre passage in Edwards' journal, and a traditionary
poem in the Fijian language, we should not know to whom belongs the
honour of first visiting them. The native tradition sets forth that with
the first visit of a European ship a devastating sickness, called the
Great Lila, or "Wasting Sickness," attacked the people of one of the
Eastern Islands (of the Lau group), and, spreading from island to island,
swept away vast numbers of the people. There are, it may be remarked,
innumerable instances in history of the contact between continental and
island peoples, both of them healthy at the time of contact, producing
fatal epidemics among the islanders. Even among our own Hebrides the
natives are said to look for an outbreak of "Strangers' Cold" after every
visit of a ship. The Fijian tradition certainly dates from a few years
before the beginning of the last century.
The real discoverers of Fiji seem to have been Oliver, master's mate;
Renouard, midshipman; James Dodds, quartermaster, and six seamen of the
_Pandora_, who formed the crew of Edwards' tender; and surely no ship
that ever ventured among those dangerous islands was so ill furnished for
repelling attack. Edwards had sent provisions and ammunition on board of
her when off Palmerston Island, but by this time they were exhausted, and
a fresh supply was actually on the _Pandora's_ deck when she parted
company. Her provision for the long and dangerous voyage before her was a
bag of salt, a bag of nails and ironware, a boarding netting, and several
seven-barrelled pieces and blunderbusses. She had besides the latitude
and longitude of the places the _Pandora_ would touch at.
The following account of their cruise is drawn from the remarks of
Edwards and Hamilton on finding the tender safe in Samarang, for I have
searched the Record Office in vain for Oliver's log. If he kept any, it
was not thought worth preserving. On the night the tender parted company,
the 22nd June, 1791, the natives of the south-east end of Upolu made a
determined attack upon the little vessel with their canoes. The
seven-barrelled pieces made terrible havoc among them, but, never having
seen fire-arms, and not understanding the connection between the fall of
their comrades and the report, they kept up the attack with great fury.
But for the boarding netting they would easily have taken the schooner,
and indeed, one fellow succeeded in springing over it, and would have
felled Oliver with his club had he not been shot dead at the moment of
striking. On the 23rd they cruised about in search of the _Pandora_ until
the afternoon when, having drunk their last drop of water, they gave her
up, and made sail for Namuka, the appointed rendezvous. The torture they
suffered from thirst on the passage was such that poor Renouard, the
midshipman, became delirious, and continued so for many weeks. Their
leeway and the easterly current combined to set them to the westward of
Namuka, and the first land they made was Tofoa, which they mistook for
Namuka, their rendezvous. The natives, the same that had attacked Bligh
so treacherously two years before, sold them provisions and water, and
then made an attempt to take the vessel, and would have succeeded but for
the fire-arms. On the very day of the attack the _Pandora_ dropped anchor
at Namuka, within sight of Tofoa, and not finding her tender, bore down
upon that island. Had Oliver been able to wait there for her, his
troubles would have been at an end. But he dared not take the risk, and
when Edwards sent a boat ashore to make enquiries the little schooner had
sailed. The reception accorded to Edwards at Tofoa is very characteristic
of the Tongans. Lieutenant Hayward, who had been present at the attack
made upon Bligh, recognised several of the murderers of Norton among the
people who crowded on board to do homage to the great chief, Fatafehi,
who had taken passage in the frigate, but Edwards dared not punish them
for fear that his tender should fall among them after he had left. Had he
but known that these men had come red-handed from a treacherous attack
upon the tender; that Fatafehi, who so loudly condemned their treachery
to Bligh, and assured him that nothing had been seen of the little
vessel, had just heard of the abortive attack they had made upon her, he
would have taught them a lesson that would have lasted the Tongans many
years, and might have saved the lives of the Europeans who perished in
the taking of the _Port-au-Prince_ and the _Duke of Portland_. For these
"Norsemen of the Pacific," whom Cook, knowing nothing of the treachery
they had planned against him under the guise of hospitality, misnamed the
"Friendly Islanders," were, in reality, a nation of wreckers.
Leaving Tofoa about July 1st, the schooner ran westward for two days
"nearly in its latitude," and fell in with an island which Edwards
supposed to be one of the Fiji group. The island of the Fiji group that
lies most nearly in the latitude of Tofoa is Vatoa, discovered by Cook,
but there are strong reasons for seeking Oliver's discoveries elsewhere.
Vatoa lies only 170 miles from Tofoa, and, therefore, if Oliver took two
days in reaching it, he cannot have been running at more than three knots
an hour. But, early in July, the south-east trade wind is at its
strongest, and with a fair wind a fast sailer, as we know the schooner to
have been, cannot have been travelling at a slower rate than six knots.
We are further told that Oliver waited five weeks at the island, and took
in provisions and water. Now, in July, which is the middle of the dry
season, no water is to be found on Vatoa except a little muddy and fetid
liquid at the bottom of shallow wells which the natives, who rely upon
coconuts for drinking water, only use for cooking. Provisions also are
very scarce there at all times. The same objections apply to Ongea and
Fulanga which lie fifty miles north of Vatoa, in the same longitude,
though they certainly possess harbours in which a vessel could lie for
five weeks, which Vatoa does not. If, however, the schooner ran at the
rate of six knots, as may safely be assumed, all difficulties, except
that of latitude, vanish together, for at the distance of 290 nautical
miles from Tofoa lies Matuku, which with much justification has been
described by Wilkes as the most beautiful of all the islands in the
Pacific. There the natives live in perpetual plenty among perennial
streams, and could victual the largest ship without feeling any
diminution of their stock. In the harbour three frigates could lie in
perfect safety, and the people have earned a reputation for honesty and
hospitality to passing ships which belongs to the inhabitants of none of
the large islands. There is another alternative--Kandavu--but to reach
that island, the schooner must have run at an average of eleven knots,
and the number and cupidity of the natives would have made a stay of five
weeks impossible to a vessel so poorly manned and armed.
All these considerations point to the fact that Oliver lay for five weeks
at Matuku, which lies but fifty miles north of the latitude of Tofoa. He
was, therefore, the first European who had intercourse with the Fijians.
Their traditions have never been collected, and if one be found recording
the insignificant details so dear to the native poet, such as the
boarding netting, or the sickness of Midshipman Renouard, or better
still, the outbreak of the Great Lila Sickness, the inference may be
taken as proved.
Any other navigator than Edwards would have given us details of Oliver's
wonderful voyage, or, at least, would have preserved his log, but the
voyage from Fiji to the Great Barrier reef is a blank. Hamilton, indeed,
alludes vaguely to the crew having had to be on their guard "at other
islands that were inhabited," and since their course from Fiji to
Endeavour Straits would have carried them through the heart of the New
Hebrides, and close to Malicolo, we may assume that they called at Api,
at Ambrym or at Malicolo to replenish their stock of water. They reached
the Great Barrier reef in the greatest distress, and having run "from
shore to shore," _i.e._ from New Guinea to within sight of the coast of
Queensland without finding an opening, and having to choose between the
alternatives of shipwreck or of death by famine, they went boldly at it,
and beat over the reef. Even then they would have starved but for their
providential encounter with a small Dutch vessel cruising a little to the
westward of Endeavour Straits, which supplied them with water and
provisions. The governor of the first Dutch settlement they touched at,
having a description of the mutineers from the British Government, and
observing that their schooner was built of foreign timber, refused to
believe their account of themselves, especially as Oliver, being a petty
officer, could produce no commission or warrant in support of his
statement, and imprisoned them all, without, however, treating them with
harshness. On the first opportunity he sent them to Samarang, where
Edwards had them released. The plucky little schooner was sold, to begin
another career of usefulness as set forth in the footnote to p. 33, and
her purchase money was divided among the _Pandora's_ crew.
Thus ended one of the most eventful voyages in the history of South Sea
discovery, dismissed by Edwards in a few lines; by Hamilton in two pages.
The search made among the naval archives at the Record Office leaves but
little hope that any log-book or journal has been preserved.
Meanwhile, Edwards, disappointed in his search for the tender at Namuka
and Tofoa, and prevented by a head wind from examining Tongatabu, set his
course again for Samoa, and passed within sight of Vavau by the way.
Making the easterly extremity of the group, he visited in turn Manua,
Tutuila, and Upolu, but, like Bougainville, did not sight Savaii, which
lay a little to the northward of his course. It is not surprising that
the natives of Upolu denied all knowledge of the tender, seeing that they
had made a determined attempt upon her less than a month before. From
Samoa he sailed to Vavau which he named Howe's Group, in ignorance that
it had been discovered by Maurelle ten years before, and subsequently
visited by La Pérouse. Running southward, he made Pylstaart, at that time
inhabited by Tongan castaways, and the fact that he did not stop to
examine it, although he saw by the smoke that it was inhabited, shows
that he had begun to tire of his search for the mutineers. Having
enquired at Tongatabu and Eua, he returned to Namuka for water, and at
this point any systematic search either for the tender or the mutineers
seems to have been abandoned.
Edwards had now been nine months at sea, and the prospect of the long
homeward voyage round the Cape was still before him. With every league he
had sailed westward the scent had grown fainter, and he was about to pass
the spot from which the mutineers were known to have sailed in the
opposite direction. His course is not easy to explain. To reason that the
tender had fallen to leeward of her rendezvous, and had been compelled to
seek shelter and provisions at one of the islands discovered by Bligh
only two days' sail to the westward, required no high degree of
foresight; and yet Edwards, who must have known the position of the Fiji
islands from Bligh's narrative, deliberately set his course for
Niuatobutabu, two days' sail to the north-west. But, falling to leeward
of it, he made Niuafo'ou, the curious volcanic island discovered by
Schouten in 1616, and never since visited. The prevailing wind making a
visit to Niuatobutabu now impossible, he visited Wallis Island, and then
bore away to the west.
On August 8th, 1791, he made the discovery of Rotuma, whose enterprising
people now furnish the Torres Straits pearl fishery with its best divers.
It is difficult to forgive him for leaving so meagre an account of this
interesting little community of mixed Polynesian and Micronesian blood.
Edwards was probably mistaken in thinking their intentions hostile. Kau
Moala, a Tongan who visited them in 1807, and related his experiences to
Mariner, describes them as always friendly to strangers. Probably they
took the _Pandora_ for a god-ship, and since the Immortals of their
Pantheon are generally malevolent, they left their women behind, and
flourished weapons to scare the gods into good behaviour. In 1807 they
had forgotten the visit, perhaps because it had brought them no calamity
to inspire the native poets. Hamilton relates an incident quite in
keeping with the character of this determined and sturdy little people.
"One fellow was making off with some booty, but was detected; and
although five of the stoutest men in the ship were hanging upon him, and
had fast hold of his long flowing black hair, he overpowered them all,
and jumped overboard with his prize."
The ill fortune that pursued Edwards, that had baulked him of Pitcairn
when it lay within a few hours' sail, that had cheated him at once of the
recovery of his tender and the discovery of Fiji, and was soon to rob him
of his ship, now dealt him the unkindest cut of all. On August 13th, he
sighted the island of Vanikoro, and ran along its shore, sometimes within
a mile of the reef. There was no conceivable reason why he should not
have made some attempt to communicate with the inhabitants whose smoke
signals attracted his attention. Had he done so, he would have been the
means of rescuing the survivors of La Pérouse's expedition, and of
clearing away the mystery that covered their fate for so many years. For,
after Dillon's discoveries, there can be little doubt that they were on
the island at that very time, and it is not unlikely that the smoke was
actually a signal made by them to attract his attention. The Comte de la
Pérouse, who had been despatched on a voyage of discovery by Louis XVI.
on the eve of the Revolution, handed his journals to Governor Phillip in
Botany Bay for transmission to Europe in 1788, and neither he, nor his
two frigates, nor any of their company were ever seen again. Their fate
produced so painful an impression in France that the National Assembly,
then in the throes of the Revolution, sent out a relief expedition under
"Citizen-admiral" d'Entrecasteaux, and issued a splendid edition of his
journals at the public expense. We now know from the native account
elicited by Dillon that during a hurricane on a very dark night both
frigates struck on the reef of Vanikoro, that the _Astrolabe_ foundered
with all hands in deep water, and the crew of the _Boussole_ got safe to
land. They stayed on the island until they had built a brig of native
timber, in which they sailed away to the westward to meet a second
shipwreck, perhaps on the Great Barrier reef. But two of them stayed
behind for many years, and of these one was certainly alive in 1825. Now,
Edwards saw Vanikoro just three years after the wreck, and even if the
brig had sailed, there were two castaways who could have cleared up the
mystery.
After a narrow escape from shipwreck on the Indispensable Reef, he made
the coast of New Guinea, supposing it to be one of the Louisiades. And
here has occurred one of those curious errors in geographical
nomenclature which are perpetuated by the most permanent of all
histories--the Admiralty charts. Edwards gives the positions of two
conspicuous headlands, which he named Cape Rodney and Cape Hood, and of a
mountain lying between them which he called Mount Clarence. All these
names appear in the Admiralty charts, but they are assigned to the wrong
places. To a ship coming from the eastward the Cape Rodney of the charts
is not conspicuous enough to have attracted Edwards' attention. The Cape
Hood of the charts, on the contrary, cannot be mistaken, and it lies
exactly in the position which Edwards gave for Cape Rodney. The "Cape
Hood" that Edwards saw was undoubtedly Round Head, and his Mount Clarence
must have been the high cone between them in the Saroa district. The
_Pandora_ must have approached on one of those misty mornings when the
clouds creep down the mountain sides of New Guinea, and obscure the
ranges that rise, tier upon tier, right up to the towering peak of Mount
Victoria, or Edwards could not have mistaken the continent for the
insignificant islands of the Louisiades. On such a morning a narrow line
of coast stands out clear against a background of sombre fog.
The baleful fortune of the _Pandora_, now folded her wings and perched
upon the taffrail. By hugging the coast of New Guinea she would have won
a clear passage through these wreck-strewn straits of Torres, but the
navigators of those days counted on clear water to Endeavour Straits, and
recked little of the dangers of the Great Barrier reef. Bligh, who
chanced upon a passage in 12.34 S. Lat. so aptly that he called it
"Providential Channel," cautioned future navigators in words that should
have warned Edwards against the course he was steering. "These, however,
are marks too small for a ship to hit, unless it can hereafter be
ascertained that passages through the reef are numerous along the coast."
Edwards was not looking for Bligh's passage, which lay more than two
degrees southward of his course. He had lately adopted a most dangerous
practice of running blindly on through the night. Until he made the coast
of New Guinea, he had profited by the warning of Bougainville, the only
navigator whose book he seems to have studied, and always lay to till
daylight, but now, in the most dangerous sea in the world, he threw this
obvious precaution to the wind. Hamilton, to whom we are indebted for
this information (for it did not transpire at the court martial) says
that "the great length of the voyage would not permit it." How fatuous a
proceeding it was in unsurveyed and unknown waters may be judged from the
fact that in coral seas that have been carefully surveyed all ships of
war are now compelled to keep the lead going whenever they move in coral
waters. On August 25th he discovered the Murray Islands, and, after
spending the day in a vain attempt to force a passage through them, he
followed the reef southward for two days without finding a passage. This
must have brought him very near the latitude of Bligh's passage. On the
morning of August 28th Lieut. Corner was sent to examine what appeared to
be a channel, and an hour before dark he signalled that he had found a
passage large enough for the ship. The night fell before the boat could
get back, and this induced Edwards, who had already lost one boat's crew
and his tender, to lie much closer to the reef than was prudent. The
current did the rest. About seven the ship struck heavily, and, bumping
over the reef, tore her planking so that, despite eleven hours incessant
pumping, she foundered shortly after daylight. Eighty-nine of the ship's
company and ten of the mutineers were picked up by the boats and landed
on a sand cay four miles distant, and thirty-one sailors, and four
mutineers (who went down in manacles) were drowned.
Having read the different versions of this affair both for and against
Edwards, I think it is proved that, besides treating his prisoners with
inhumanity, he disregarded the orders of the Admiralty. His attitude
towards the prisoners was always consistent. We learn from Corner that he
allowed Coleman, Norman and Mackintosh to work at the pumps, but that
when the others implored him to let them out of irons he placed two
additional sentries over them, and threatened to shoot the first man who
attempted to liberate himself. Every allowance must be made for the fear
that in the disordered state of the ship, they might have made an attempt
to escape, but during the eleven hours in which the water was gaining
upon the pumps there was ample time to provide for their security. That
so many were saved was due, not to him, but to a boatswain's mate, who
risked his own life to liberate them. Lieut. Corner, who would not have
been likely to err on the side of hostility to Edwards, gives his
evidence against him in this particular. But whether he is to be believed
or not, the fact that four of the prisoners went down in irons is
impossible to extenuate.
Edwards dismisses the boat voyage in very few words, though, in fact, it
was a remarkable achievement to take four overloaded boats from the
Barrier Reef to Timor without the loss of a single man. He made the coast
of Queensland a little to the south of Albany Island, where the blacks
first helped him to fill his water breakers, and then attacked him. He
watered again at Horn Island, and then sailed through the passage which
bears Flinders' name owing to the fallacy that he discovered it. After
clearing the sound, he seems to have mistaken Prince of Wales' Island for
Cape York, which he had left many miles behind him.
Favoured by a fair wind and a calm sea, he made the run from Flinders
passage to Timor in eleven days. Like Bligh, he found that the young bore
their privations better than the old, and that the first effect of thirst
and famine is to make men excessively irritable. Hamilton records a
characteristic incident. Edwards had neglected to conduct prayers in his
boat until he was reminded of his duty by one of the mutineers, who was
leading the devotions of the seamen in the bows of the boat. Scandalized
at the impropriety of a "pirate" daring to appeal to the Highest Tribunal
for mercy, as it were, behind the back of the earthly court before which
he was shortly to be arraigned, the captain sternly reproved him, and
conducted prayers himself. A sense of humour was not numbered among
Edwards' endowments.
Timor was sighted on the 13th September, and on the 15th the party landed
at Coupang, where the Dutch authorities received them with every
hospitality. Here they met the survivors of a third boat voyage,
scarcely less adventurous than Bligh's and their own. A party of
convicts, including a woman and two small children, had contrived to
steal a ship's gig and to escape in her from Port Jackson. Sleeping on
shore at nights whenever possible, subsisting on shell-fish and
sea-birds, they ran the entire length of the Queensland coast, threaded
Endeavour Straits, and arrived at Coupang after an exposure lasting ten
weeks without the loss of a single life. Having given themselves out as
the survivors from the wreck of an English ship, they were entertained
with great hospitality until the arrival of Edwards two weeks later, when
they betrayed their story gratuitously. The captain of a Dutch vessel,
who spoke English, on first hearing the news of Edwards' landing, ran to
them with the glad tidings of their captain's arrival, on which one of
them started up in surprise and exclaimed, "What captain? Dam'me! we have
no captain." On hearing this the governor had them arrested, and sent to
the castle, one man and the woman having to be pursued into the bush
before they were taken. They then confessed that they were escaped
convicts.
Apart from their adventurous voyage, there is much romance about their
story. William Bryant, the leader, had been transported for smuggling,
and his sweetheart, Mary Broad, who was maid to a lady in Salcombe, in
Devonshire for connivance in her lover's escape from Winchester Gaol. In
due course they were married in Botany Bay, where Bryant was employed as
fisherman to the governor, a post that enabled him to plan their
successful escape. Bryant and both children died on the voyage home,
together with three others, Morton, Cox and Simms, but the woman survived
to obtain a full pardon, owing chiefly to the exertions of an officer of
marines who went home with her in the _Gorgon_, and eventually married
her.[24-1] Butcher, who was also pardoned, returned to New South Wales
and became a thriving settler. The remaining four were sent back to
complete their sentences. Their story has been graphically told by
Messrs. Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery in "The First Fleet Family."
During the voyage from Coupang to Batavia Edwards narrowly escaped a
second shipwreck. The _Rembang_ was dismasted on a lee shore in a
cyclone, and, but for the exertions of the English seamen, would
assuredly have been stranded, the Dutch sailors, who, says the facetious
Hamilton, "would fight the devil should he appear to them in any other
shape but that of thunder and lightning," having taken to their hammocks.
At Samarang, as already related, Edwards found the tender, which he had
long given up for lost, and the price she fetched enabled the crew to
purchase decent clothing. Heywood afterwards asserted that no clothing
was given to the prisoners but what they could earn by plaiting and
selling straw hats. They were miserably housed, when on board the
_Rembang_, and kept in rigid confinement both at Batavia, and on the
_Vreedemberg_, in which they made the voyage to the Cape.
At Batavia Edwards divided his men among three Dutch vessels homeward
bound, but at the Cape he removed his own contingent into H.M.S.
_Gorgon_, and arrived at Spithead on June 18th, 1792. Two days later the
ten mutineers were transferred to H.M.S. _Hector_, Captain Montague, and
the convicts were sent to Newgate. The court martial, which did not
assemble until September 12th, lasted five days, with the result that
Norman, Coleman, Mackintosh and Byrne were acquitted, and Heywood,
Morrison, Ellison, Burkitt, Millward and Muspratt were condemned to
death, the two first being recommended to mercy. On October 24th Heywood
and Morrison received the King's pardon, and both re-entered the Navy,
Heywood to retire in 1816, when nearly at the head of the list of
captains; Morrison to go down in the ill-fated _Blenheim_ in which he was
serving as gunner. Muspratt also was pardoned, but the three others were
hanged on board the _Brunswick_ in Portsmouth Harbour on October 29th,
1792. Thus ended a voyage that, for adventure and discovery, deserves a
high place in the history of maritime enterprise in the Pacific. Voyages
take their rank from the scientific attainments and literary ability of
the men who record them, and the _Pandora_, unlucky in her fate as in her
ill-omened name, was scarcely less unfortunate in her historian.
B. T.
FOOTNOTES:
[10-1] Mr. Louis Becke, "The Mutineers."
[24-1] The _Gorgon_ also carried Lieut. Clark, of the Royal Marines,
whose journal of the voyage to Botany Bay and Norfolk Island in 1789
throws a very interesting light upon the early days of the colony.
Unfortunately the journal says very little of the _Gorgon's_ voyage
home.
CAPTAIN EDWARDS' REPORTS.
"_Pandora_ in Sta Cruz Bay,
Teneriff,
25th November, 1790.
[R 28 Dec. and Read.]
SIR,
Be pleased to acquaint My Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty that I
sailed again from Jack-in-the-Basket with His Majesty's Ship _Pandora_
under my command on the 7th day of November, and anchored in Santa Cruz
by Teneriffe on the 22nd: that nothing particular occured in my passage
to this place, except that of my falling in with His Majesty's sloop
_Shark_ on the 17th November in Latitude 32° 33' Longitude 13° 40' W.
bound to Madeira with despatches for Rear Admiral Cornish, and my
learning from them that the matters in dispute with Spain were amicably
settled, of which circumstance I was unacquainted when I left England. I
am now compleating my water, and have taken on board full 3 months wine
for my compliment, with some fruit and vegetables, and purpose and
flatter myself that I shall be able to sail from hence this evening.
Inclosed I send the state and condition of His Majesty's Ship _Pandora_
for their Lordships' information, and I have the honour to be,
Sir,
Your most obedient and ever humble servant,
EDWARD EDWARDS.
Phillip Stevens, Esq."
"_Pandora_ at Rio Janeiro,
the 6th January, 1791.
[Received 29th June and read.]
SIR,