HMS Pandora (1779)
The wrecked HMS Pandora
- 22 × 9- pounder guns
- 2 × 6 -pounder guns
The HMS Pandora was a 24 -gun frigate bearing the Porcupine - class that was in 1790 sent by the British Admiralty, under the command of Captain Edward Edwards, to arrest the mutineers of the Bounty.
Search the Bounty
The Pandora left in November 1790 England, rounded Cape Horn, sailed the Pacific and passed out of sight and without that Edwards knew this, Pitcairn Island, the refuge of not remaining on Tahiti Bounty mutineers. Here, Edwards discovered on 16 March 1791, the approximately five hundred kilometers east of Pitcairn located Ducie Atoll.
The Pandora reached Tahiti on 23 March 1791. Sooner had the ship anchored in the Matavai Bay, there were three crew members of the Bounty (Peter Heywood, George Stewart and Joseph Coleman ) voluntarily on board. Edwards she was immediately arrested. Meanwhile, the ship's carpenter built as a prison for the mutineers on the aft deck a 3.4 x 5.5 meter ( 11 × 18 ft ) wide, massive dugout of the team called in accordance with the Pandora "Pandora 's Box ".
On the same day Captain Edwards started using the local chiefs the search for the remaining crew members of the Bounty. In view of the British warship some had fled into the mountains, others by chance sailed earlier in the day with a home-built boat to Papara on the south coast of Tahiti. After two weeks, all remaining mutineers on Tahiti were captured. The fate of the Bounty and the remaining nine crew members Edwards could only find out that they had sailed away to an unknown destination.
Edwards could overtake the Pandora and supply them with food, photographed on 8 May 1791, the anchor and set off in search of the Bounty, without the slightest indication of where the ship could be. The Pandora crossed for three months, the South Pacific, crossed the Cook Islands, Tokelau, Samoa, Wallis and Futuna. On Palmerston (Cook Islands), a dinghy was removed and several crew members probably died. Since the search was focused on the frequently traveled the western Pacific, you could not find the Bounty and her crew in her hiding on the far east located Pitcairn.
Return and demise
Beginning of August sailed Edwards of Samoa to Endeavour Strait, the Strait between Australia and Papua New Guinea to begin the return journey to England. The Endeavour Street was largely unexplored and only charted insufficient. Edwards therefore had to find a fairway through the Great Barrier Reef. On the evening of August 29 1791, the Pandora ran on a coral reef and took as fast water that the team with the pumps could achieve little. Therefore, Edwards left the boats deploy. The Bounty mutineers Coleman, Mc Intosh and Norman, the captain Bligh had designated as innocent were freed from their prison, the others remained tied up in " Pandora's Box".
Towards morning the ship had sunk so low that the upper deck was only partially over water. Ten prisoners were, contrary to the command of Edwards, are exempt from the crew of the Pandora in the last minute. Skinner, Sumner, Stewart and Hill Brant drowned.
From the ship's crew 31 sailors were drowned and 89, including Captain Edwards, saved. With the four open lifeboats of Pandora, they crossed the barrier reef and reached the uninhabited peninsula York. Then they made their way to the Dutch colony of Timor, where they arrived after over 1,000 miles long, adventurous journey on 16 September 1791. As passengers Dutch East Indiaman returned Captain Edwards, the sound of his crew members and the ten surviving Bounty mutineer via intermediate stations in Batavia and Cape Town back to England.
The Pandora today
In November 1977, the wreck was discovered by a Lockheed P -3, the Royal Australian Air Force during a patrol flight. The ship is located at the outer portion of the barrier reef, about 120 kilometers east of Cape York in Queensland, Australia. The Queensland Museum conducted an archaeological survey that identified the wreck of the Pandora doubt. Obviously, the ship has been sunk starboard down to the ground and partially covered by sand. The silted parts remained largely intact.
In 1979 the wreck was placed under protection and set up a protection zone. Between 1983 and 1999 there were a total of nine archaeological expeditions conducted by the Queensland Museum, South Bank, Brisbane, who recovered many relics. Some of them are exhibited in the Museum in Brisbane. For cost reasons and because archaeological infertility is unlikely that the remains of the Pandora be completely lifted.