VOYAGE OF H.M.S. 'PANDORA'

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

	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 inhabi tants 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,

Be pleased to acquaint My Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty that I sailed from Teneriff with His Majesty's Ship Pandora on the afternoon of the 25th November, agreeable to my intentions signified to their Lordships by letter from that island, and anchored off the city Rio Janeiro on the evening of the 31st of December with a view to compleat my water and to get refreshments for the ship's company and from my being persuaded that very long runs, particularly with new ships' companies, are prejudicial to health, and as my men are of that description, and have also suffered in their health from a fever which has prevailed amongst them in a greater or less degree ever since they left England, were other inducements for my touching at this port. I shall stay here no longer than is absolutely necessary to procure these articles, and which I expect to be able to accomplish by the seventh of this month, and I shall then proceed on my voyage as soon as wind and weather will permit.

Herewith I send the state and condition of His Majesty's Ship Pandora, and I have the honour to be, Sir,

Your most obedient and humble servant,

Edw. Edwards."

"Batavia, the 25th November, 1791.

29th May, 1792.

From Amsterdam.

Sir,

In a letter dated the 6th day of January, 1791, which I did myself the honour to address to you from Rio Janeiro I gave an account of my proceedings up to that time and inclosed the state and condition of His Majesty's Ship Pandora under my command, and having compleated the water and procured such articles of provision, etc., for the use of the Ship's Company as they were in want of and I thought necessary for the voyage, I sailed from that port on the 8th January, 1791, run along the coast of America, Tierra Del Fuego, Hatin Land, round Cape Horn and proceeded directly to Otaheite, and arrived at Matavy Bay in that Island on the 23rd March without having touched in any other place in my passage thither.

It was my intention to have put into New Year's harbour, or some other port in its neighbourhood to complete our water and to refresh my people, could I have effected that business within the month of January; but as I arrived too late on that coast to fulfil my intentions within the time, it determined me to push forward without delay, by which means I flattered myself I might avoid that extreme bad weather and all the evil consequences that are usually experienced in doubling Cape Horn in a more advanced season of the year, and I had the good fortune not to be disappointed in my expectation.

After doubling the Cape, and advancing Northward into warmer weather, the fever which had prevailed on board gradually declined, and the diseases usually succeeding such fevers prevented by a liberal use of the antiscorbutics and other nourishing and useful articles with which we were so amply supplied, and the ship's company arrived at Otaheite in perfect health, except a few whose debilitated constitutions no climate, provisions or medicine could much improve.

In our run to Otaheite we discovered 3 islands: the first, which I called Ducie's Island, lies in Latitude 24° 40′ 30″ S. and Longitude 124° 36′ 30″ W. from Greenwich. It is between 2 and 3 miles long. The second I called Lord Hood's Island. It lies in Latitude 21° 31′ S. and Longitude 135° 32′ 30″ W., and is about 8 miles long. The third I called Carysfort's Island. It lies in Latitude 20° 49′ S. and Longitude 138° 33′ W. and it is 5 miles long. They are all three low lagoon islands covered with wood, but we saw no inhabitants on either of them.[30-1] Before we anchored at Matavy Bay, Joseph Coleman, Armourer of the Bounty, and several of the natives came on board, from whom I learned that Christian the pirate had landed and left 16 of his men on the Island, some of whom were then at Matavy, and some had sailed from there the morning before our arrival (in a schooner they had built) for Papara, a distant part of the Island, to join other of the pirates that were settled at that place, and that Churchill, Master at Arms, had been murdered by Matthew Thompson, and that Matthew Thompson was killed by the natives and offered as a sacrifice on their altars for the murder of Churchill, whom they had made a chief.

George Stewart and Peter Heywood, midshipmen of the Bounty, came on board the Pandora soon after she came to an anchor, and I had also information that Richard Skinner was at Matavy. I desired Poen, an inferior chief (who, in the absence of Otoo, was the principal person in the district) to bring him on board. The chief went on shore for the purpose, and soon after he returned again and informed me that Skinner was coming on board. Before night he did come on board, but whether it was in consequence of the chief's instructions, or his own accord, I am at a loss to say. As soon as the ship was moored the pinnace and launch were got ready and sent under the direction of Lt. Corner and Hayward in pursuit of the pirates and schooner in hopes of getting hold of them before they could get information of our arrival, and Odiddee, a native of Bolabola, and who has been with Capt. Cook, etc., went with them as a guide.

The boats were discovered by the pirates before they had arrived at the place where these people had landed, and they immediately embarked in their schooner and put to sea, and she was chased the remainder of the day by our boats, but, it blowing fresh, she outsailed them, and the boats returned to the ship. Jno. Brown, the person left at Otaheite by Mr. Cox of the Mercury,[31-1] and from whom their Lordships supposed I might get some useful information, had been under the necessity for his own safety to associate with the pirates, but he took the opportunity to leave them when they were about to embark in the schooner and put to sea. He informed me that they had very little water and provisions on board, or vessels to hold them in, and, of course, could not keep at sea long. I entered Brown on the ship's books as part of the compliment and found him very intelligent and useful in the different capacities of guide, soldier and seaman. I employed different people to look out for and to give information on their landing either on this or the neighbouring islands.

On the 26th, in the evening, sent the pinnace to Edee by desire of the old Otoo, or king, to bring him on board the Pandora. Early on the morning of the 27th, I had information that the pirates were returning with the schooner to Papara and that they were landed and retired to the mountains, to endeavour to conceal and defend themselves. Immediately sent Lt. Corner with 26 men in the launch to Papara to pursue them. At night the Otoo, his two queens and suite came on board the pinnace and slept on board the Pandora, which they afterwards frequently did.

The next morning Lt. Hayward was sent with a party in the pinnace to join the party in the launch at Papara. I found the Otoo ready to furnish me with guides and to give me any other assistance in his power, but he had very little authority or influence in that part of the island where the pirates had taken refuge, and even his right to the sovereignty of the eastern part of the island had been recently disputed by Tamarie, one of the royal family. Under these circumstances I conceived the taking of the Otoo and the other chiefs attached to his interest into custody would alarm the faithful part of his subjects and operate to our disadvantage. I therefore satisfied myself with the assistance he offered and had in his power to give me, and I found means at different times to send presents to Tamarie (and invited him to come on board, which he promised to do, but never fulfilled his promise), and convinced him I had it in my power to lay his country in waste, which I imagined would be sufficient at least to make him withhold that support he hitherto, through policy, had occasionally given to the pirates in order to draw them to his interest and to strengthen his own party against the Otoo.

I probably might have had it in my power to have taken and secured the person of Tamarie, but I was apprehensive that such an attempt might irritate the natives attached to his interest, and induce them to act hostilely against our party at a time the ship was at too great a distance to afford them timely and necessary assistance in case of such an event, and I adopted the milder method for that reason, and from a persuasion that our business could be brought to a conclusion at less risk and in less time by that means. The yawl was sent to Papara with spare hands to bring back the launch which was wanted to water the ship, and on the 29th the launch returned to the ship with James Morrison,[33-1] Charles Norman, and Thomas Ellison, belonging to the Bounty, and who had been made prisoners at Papara on the 7th April. The companies returned with the detachment from Papara, and brought with them the pirate schooner which they had taken there. The natives had deserted the place, and I had information that the six remaining pirates had fled to the mountains.

On the 5th I sent Lt. Hayward with 25 men in the schooner and yawl to Papara, the old Otoo and several of the youths, &c., went with him. On the 7th, in the morning, Lt. Corner was landed with 16 men at Point Venus in order to march round the back of the mountains, in which the pirates had retreated, to cooperate with the party sent to Papara. Orissia, the Otoo's brother, and a party of natives went with him as guides and to carry the provisions, &c.

On the 9th Lt. Hayward returned with the schooner and yawl and brought with him Henry Hillbrant, Thomas M'Intosh, Thomas Burkitt, Jno. Millward, Jno. Sumner and William Muspratt, the six remaining pirates belonging to the Bounty. They had quitted the mountains and had got down near the seashore when they were discovered by our party on the opposite side of a river. They submitted, on being summoned to lay down their arms. Lt. Corner with his party marched across the mountains to Papara, and a boat was sent for them there, and they returned on board again on the 13th in the afternoon. I put the pirates in the round house which I built at the after part of the Quarter deck for their more effectual security, airy and healthy situation, and to separate them from, and to prevent their having any communication with, or to crowd and incommode the ship's company.

Contrary to my expectations, the water we got at the usual place at Point Venus turned out very bad, and on touching for better, most excellent water was found issuing out of a rock in a little bay to the southward of One Tree Hill. I mention this circumstance because it may be of importance to be known to other ships that may hereafter touch at that island.

The natives had in their possession a bower anchor belonging to the Bounty, which that ship had left in the bay, and I took it on board the Pandora, and made them a handsome present by way of salvage and as a reward for their ingenuity in weighing it with materials so ill calculated for the purpose. I learned from different people and from journals kept on board the Bounty, which were found in the chests of the pirates at Otaheite, that after Lt. Bligh and the people with him were turned adrift in the launch, the pirates proceeded with the ship to the Island of Toobouai in Latitude 20° 13′ S. and Longitude 149° 35′ W., where they anchored on the 25th May, 1789. Before their arrival there they threw the greatest part of the bread fruit plants overboard, and the property of the officers and people that were turned out of the ship was divided amongst those who remained on board her, and the royals and some other small sails were cut up and disposed of in the same manner.

Notwithstanding they met with some opposition from the natives, they intended to settle on this island, but after some time they perceived that they were in want of several things necessary for a settlement and which was the cause of disagreements and quarrels amongst themselves. At last they came to a resolution to come to Otaheite to get such of the things wanted as could be procured there, and in consequence of that resolution they sailed from Toobouai at the latter end of the month and arrived at Otaheite on the 6th of June. The Otoo and other natives were very inquisitive and desirous to know what was become of Lt. Bligh and the other absentees and the bread fruit plants, &c. They deceived them by saying that they had fallen in with Captain Cook at an island he had lately discovered called "Why-Too-Tackee" [Aitutaki], and where he intended to settle, and that the plants were landed and planted there, and that Lt. Bligh and the other absentees were detained to assist Captain Cook in the business he had in hand, and that he had appointed Christian captain of the Bounty and ordered him to Otaheite for an additional supply of hogs, goats, fowls, bread fruit plants, &c.

These humane islanders were imposed upon by this artful story, and they were so rejoiced to hear that their old friend Captain Cook was alive and was near them that they used every means in their power to procure the things that were wanted, so that in the course of a few days the Bounty took on board 312 hogs, 38 goats, eight dozen fowls, a bull and a cow, and a quantity of bread fruit plants, &c. They also took with them a woman, eight men and seven boys. With these supplies they sailed from Otaheite on the 19th June and arrived again at Toobouai on the 26th. They landed the live stock on the quays that were near the harbour, lightened the ship and warped her up the harbour into two fathoms water opposite to the place where they intended to build the fort. On this occasion their spare masts, yards and booms were got out and moored, but they afterwards broke adrift and were lost.[36-1]

On the 19th July they began to build the fort. Its dimensions were 50 yards square. These villains had frequent quarrels amongst themselves which at last were carried to such a length that no order was observed amongst them, and by the 30th August the work at the fort was discontinued. They had also almost continual disputes and skirmishes with the natives, which were generally brought on by their own violence and depredations. Christian, perceiving that he had lost his authority, and that nothing more could be done, desired them to consult together and consider what step would be the most advisable to take, and said that he would put into execution the opinion that was supported by the most votes. After long consultation it was at last determined that the scheme of staying at Toobouai should be given up, and that the ship should be taken to Otaheite, where those who chose to go on shore should be at liberty to do so, and those who remained on the ship might take her away to whatever place they should think fit.

In consequence of this final determination preparations were made for the purpose and they sailed from Toobouai on the 15th and arrived at Matavy Bay, Otaheite, on the 20th September 1789. The bull which they took from Otaheite died on its passage to Toobouai, and they killed the cow before they left that island, yet, notwithstanding this and the depredations they committed there, the natives still derived considerable advantage from their visits, as several hogs, goats, fowls and other things of their introduction were left behind. These sixteen men mentioned before were landed at Otaheite, viz.:—

Joseph Coleman [Armourer].[37-3]
Peter Heywood [Midshipman].[37-2]
George Stewart [Midshipman].[37-4]
Richard Skinner [A.B.].[37-4]
Michael Burn [A.B. Fiddler].[37-3]
James Morrison [Boatswain's Mate].[37-2]
Charles Norman [Carpenter's Mate].[37-3]
Thomas Ellison [A.B.].[37-1]
Henry Hillbrant [A.B.].[37-4]
John Sumner [A.B.].[37-4]
Thomas M'Intosh [Carpenter's Crew].[37-3]
William Muspratt [A.B.].[37-1]
Thomas Burkitt [A.B.].[37-1]
John Millward [A.B.].[37-1]

These fourteen were made prisoners by my people and Charles Churchill and Matthew Thompson were murdered on that island. Previous to these people being put on shore the small arms, powder, canvas and the small stores belonging to the ship were equally divided amongst the whole crew. After building the schooner six of these people actually sailed in her for the East Indies, but meeting with bad weather and suspecting the abilities of Morrison, whom they had chosen to be their captain to navigate her there, they returned again to Otaheite on the night between the 21st and 22nd of September 1789 and were seen in the morning to the N.W. of Point Venus.[37-5]

Fletcher Christian, Edward Young, Matthew Quintall, William M'Koy, Alexander Smith, John Williams, Isaac Martin, William Brown and John Mills went away in the ship and they also took with them several natives of these islands, both men and women, but I could not exactly learn their numbers, only that they had on board a few more women than white men, a deficiency of whom had formerly been one of their grievances and the principal cause of their quarrels. Christian had been frequently heard to declare that he would search for an unknown or uninhabited island in which there was no harbour for shipping, would run the ship ashore and get from her such things as would be useful to him and settle there, but this information was too vague to be followed in an immense ocean strewed with an almost innumerable number of known and unknown islands; therefore after the ship was caulked, which I found was necessary to be done, the rigging overhauled and in other respects refitted her for sea, and fitted the pirates' schooner as a tender, and put on board two petty officers [38-1] and seven men to navigate her, conceiving she would be of considerable use in covering the boats in my future search for the Bounty, as well as for reconnoitring the passage through the reef leading to Endeavour Straits; I sailed from Otaheite on the 8th of May with a view to put the remainder of my orders into execution.

Oediddee was desirous to go in the Pandora to Ulietia and to Bolabola, and as I thought he would be useful as a guide for the boats I took him with me and steered for Huahaine which we saw the next morning. The tender and the boats were employed the 9th and part of the 10th in examining the harbours, and Oediddee went with them as pilot. Several chiefs came on board and brought with them hogs and other articles, the produce of the island, and a servant of Omai also came on board, and said that he was not then much the better for his master's riches, however his former connections was the cause of his visit to the ship being made very profitable to him, and all the chiefs and their attendances received presents from me. Two of the chiefs of this island were desirous to go in the ship to Ulietia and I had given them leave to, but when the ship was about to make sail they suddenly changed their minds and went on shore and took Oediddee with them. Oediddee promised to follow us there the next day, but we did not see him again.

I proceeded to Ulietea Otaka and Bolabola, and the tender and boats were employed in examining the bays and harbours of these islands, but we got no intelligence of the Bounty or her people. Tahatoo, who called himself king of Bolabola, informed me that he had been a few days before at Tubai, which is a small, low island situated on the Northward of Bolabola and under its jurisdiction, and that there were no white men upon that island, nor upon Maurua, another island in sight of it and to the westward of Bolabola. He also mentioned another island which I thought he called Mojeshah, but we know no such island unless it be Howe's Island, and that seems to be situated too far to the South and to the West for the island he attempted to describe and point out to us. The chiefs and several other people came on board from these islands and brought with them the usual produce, and they were at all the isles very pressing to prevail upon us to make a longer stay with them, but as I had no object particularly in view and my people in good health, I did not think it proper unnecessarily to waste my time for the sake of procuring a few articles that were in greater abundance in these islands than at Otaheite. I made presents to all those chiefs as it was my custom to do to everyone that had the least pretension to pre-eminence, and to all the people who came on board in the first boat.

After leaving Bolabola I steered for Maurua and passed it at a small distance. Howe's Island was not seen by us as it is a low island and we passed to the Southward of it. I then shaped my course to get into the latitude of and to fall in to the Eastward of Why-to-tackee [Aitutaki].

On the 14th, Henry Hillbrant, one of the pirates, gave information that Christian had declared to him the evening before he left Otaheite that he intended to go with the Bounty to an uninhabited island discovered by Mr. Byron, situated to the Westward of the Isles of Danger, which, from description of the situation, I found to be the island called by Mr. Byron "The Duke of York's Island,"[40-1] and if they could land, would settle there and run the ship upon the reef and destroy her, and if they could not land, or if on examination found it would not answer their purpose, he would look out for some other uninhabited island. However, I continued my course for Why-to-tackee, being now determined to examine the island in preference to following any intelligence, however plausible, and on the morning of the 19th saw the Island of Why-to-tackee [Aitutaki],[40-2] and sent the tender in shore to ground and look out for a harbour.

At noon sent Lt. Hayward in the yawl to look into a place on the N.W. part of the island that had the appearance of a harbour and to get intelligence of the natives. In the evening he returned. The place was so far from being fit for the reception of the ship that he could scarcely find a passage through the reef for the boat; he conversed with seven or eight different sets of people, whom he met with in canoes, and they all agreed that the Bounty was not, nor had not been there since Lt. Bligh left the island, nor did any of them known anything of her. Lt. Hayward recollected one of the natives, whom he remembered to have seen on board the Bounty when he discovered the island, and he saw another savage belonging to a neighbouring island who knew Captain Cook and inquired after him, Omai and Oediddee, whom he said he had seen.

These people at first approached the boat with caution, and could not be prevailed upon to come on board the ship. As I was convinced that the Bounty was not on this island, and as Hervey's, Mangea and Wattea Islands to the S.E. of Why-to-tackee were inhabited, I did not think it probable that Christian, in the weak state the ship was in, would attempt to settle upon either of them, and as there was some plausibility in the information given me by Hillbrant the prisoner, and as the Duke of York's Island seemed to answer the description of such an island as Christian had been heard by others to declare he would search for to settle on, it being by Mr. Byron's account uninhabited, and with a harbour; and as the fact that it was out of the known track of ships in these seas since our acquaintance with the Society Islands, made it still more eligible for his purpose; from these united circumstances I thought it was probable he might make choice of the Duke of York's Island for his intended settlement. I therefore determined to proceed to that island, taking Palmerston's island in my way thither, as it also answered in all respects, except situation, to the description of the other; and at night I bore away and made sail for Palmerston's Island, and made that on the 21st in the afternoon.[42-1]

On the 22nd in the morning sent the schooner tender and cutter in shore to look for the harbours or anchorage, and soon after Lt. Corner was sent in the yawl for the same purpose and to look out for the Bounty and her people. At noon, perceiving the schooner and cutter had got round the Northernmost island, I stood round the S.E. island with the ship in order to join the yawl that was at a grapnel off that island, and sent the other yawl to join Lt. Corner. At 4 the two yawls returned with a quantity of cocoanuts and Lt. Corner also returned on board. Soon after, Lt. Hayward was sent on shore in the yawl to examine the S.W. island. After dark we burnt several false fires as signals to the boat, but the weather being thick and squally she did not return till the morning of the 23rd, but the tender joined us that night and informed me that she had found a yard on the island marked "Bounty's Driver Yard" and other circumstances that indicated that the Bounty was, or had been there. The tender was immediately sent on shore after the yawl.

On the 23rd provisions, ammunition, &c., was sent on board the tender,[43-1] and Lt. Corner with a party of men were sent with the yawl and tender to land on the Northernmost island. At 4 in the afternoon, perceiving that the schooner tender had anchored under that island the yawl landing the party on the reef leading to it, Lt. Corner had orders to examine that and the Easternmost island very minutely to see if any other traces besides the yard could be made out of the Bounty or her people.

On the 24th in the morning sent the cutter on board the tender for intelligence, but she did not return till nearly 2 o'clock in the afternoon, when she brought with her seven men of Lt. Corner's party. She was sent on board the tender again with orders for the remainder of the party that was returned from the search to be brought on board the Pandora in the yawl, and for the cutter to remain on board the tender to embark Lt. Corner when he returned, the midshipman having represented that she answered the purpose of landing and embarking better than the larger boat from the particular circumstances of the landing place; and I stood over for the S.W. island to take on board the other yawl which had been sent to ground near the reef of that island and to procure from it some cocoanuts, &c.

At 5 the yawl came on board, and I then stood towards the schooner in order to take the other yawl on board, but the weather became squally with rain and I stood out to sea. During the night the weather was rougher than usual, with an ugly sea and I did not get close in with them again till the 28th at noon, soon after which the yawl came on board from the schooner and informed us to my great astonishment and concern that the cutter had not been on board her since she left the ship.[44-1] The tender was ordered to run down by the side of the reef and if the cutter was not seen there to run out to sea six leagues and to steer about W.N.W.-W., it being the opposite point to that on which the wind blew from the preceding night, and I waited with the ship to take on board Lt. Corner who was not then returned from the search. He soon after appeared and was taken on board.

In his search he found a double canoe curiously painted, and different in make from those we had seen on the islands we had visited. A piece of wood burnt half through was also found. The yard and these things lay upon the beach at high water mark and were all eaten by the sea worm, which is a strong presumption they were drifted there by the waves. The driver yard was probably drove from Toobouai where the Bounty lost the greater part of her spars, and as no recent traces could be found on the island of a human being or any part of the wreck of a ship I gave up all further search and hopes of finding the Bounty or her people there. I then stood out to sea and the ship and the tender cruized about in search of the cutter until the 29th in the morning, when seeing nothing of her, I being at that time well in with the land, sent on shore once more to examine the reef and beach of the northernmost island, but with no better success than before, as neither the cutter or any article belonging to her could be found there.

I then steered for the Duke of York's island which we got sight of at noon on the 6th June, and in the afternoon the tender and two yawls were sent on shore to examine the coast. On the 7th in the morning Lt. Corner and Hayward were sent on shore with a party of men attended by the schooner and two yawls. We soon after saw some huts upon the island and so made a signal to the boats to warn them of danger, and for them to be upon their guard against surprise. They landed and got canoes to the within side of the lagoon in which they made a circuit of it. A few houses were found in examining the hills on the opposite side of the lagoon, and also a ship's large wooden buoy, which appeared to be of foreign make, and had evident marks of its having been long in the water.

As Mr. Byron describes the Duke of York's island to be without inhabitants, the sight of the houses and ship's buoy, before they were minutely examined wrot so strongly on the minds of the people that they saw many things in imagination that did not exist, but all tended to persuade them that the Bounty's people were really upon the island agreeable to the intelligence given by Hillbrant, but after a most minute and repeated search, no human being of any description could be found upon the island. There were a number of canoes, spare paddles, fishing gear, and a variety of other things found in the houses which seemed to prove that it was an occasional residence and fishery of the natives of some neighbouring islands.[46-1]

There is so great a difference in the situation of this island as laid down in the charts of Hawkesworth's collection of voyages and also some others from that of Captain Cook that there may be some doubt about its real situation. I followed that of Captain Cook, yet the situation of this island by our account did not exactly agree with him. He lays it down in Latitude 8° 41′ S. and Longitude 173° 3′ W., and the centre of the island by our account lies Latitude 8° 34′ S. and Longitude by observation 172° 6′, and by timekeeper 172° 39′ W. By our estimation this island is not so large as it is by Mr. Byron's. In other respects, except the houses, it answers his description very well. I should have stood off to the westward to have seen if there were any other islands in that direction, but I was apprehensive by so doing that I might have much difficulty in fetching the island I had then to visit, and as the wind was favourable to stand to the Southward when I left the island, I therefore satisfied myself in passing to the westward of it and stretching to the northward so far as to know there was no island within thirty miles of it on that point of the compass, and also to pass to the windward of the island when I put about and stood to the northward.

In standing to the Northward I discovered an island on the 12th June.[46-2] We soon perceived that it was a lagoon island, formed by a great many small islands connected together by a reef of rocks, forming a circle round the lagoon in its centre. It is low, but well wooded, amongst which the cocoanut tree is conspicuous both for its height and peculiar form. As we approached the land we saw several natives on the beach. Lt. Hayward was sent with the tender and yawl in shore to reconnoitre and to endeavour to converse with the natives, and if possible to bring about a friendly intercourse with them. They made signs of friendship and beckoned him to come on shore, yet, whenever he drew near with the boat, they always retired, and he could not prevail on them to come to her; and the surf was thought too great to venture to land, at least before the friendship of the natives was better confirmed.

We soon afterwards saw several sailing canoes with stages in their middle, sailing across the lagoon for the opposite islands, but whether it was a flight, or that they were only going a-fishing, or on some other business, we were at that time at a loss to know. Lt. Corner was sent to look for a better landing place, and, thinking that there was the appearance of an opening into the lagoon round the N.W. island, I stood that way with the ship to take a view of it but found that it was also barred in that part by a reef. Better landing places were found, but they were to leeward and at a considerable distance from the place that seemed to be the principal residence of the natives.

The next morning Lt. Corner and Hayward landed with a strong party near the houses, which they found deserted by the natives, and they had taken with them all the canoes except one. It appeared exactly to resemble those we had seen at the Duke of York's island. The houses, fishing gear and utensils were also similar to those seen there, which made me suppose that these were the people who occasionally visited that island, but this had the appearance of being the principal residence as Morais, or burying places, were found at this, but none at the former.

I was very desirous to get into communication with these people, as I thought we might possibly get some useful information relative to the buoy we had seen at the Duke of York's island, or about the Bounty had she touched at either of these islands, or at any others in their neighbourhood. With that view I left in and about the houses hatchets, knives, glasses and a variety of things that I thought would be useful or pleasing to them, and also to show them that we were disposed to be friendly to them, and by that means I hoped they would become less shy, and that our intercourse with them would be brought about; and I stood round the northernmost island to visit other parts of the island, and on the 14th in the morning Lt. Corner was sent on shore with the tender, yawl and canoe, and he landed to the eastward of the northernmost island and marched round to the northeast extremity of the islands: he perceived marks of bare feet of the natives in different parts, but more particularly about the cocoanut trees, most of which were stripped of their fruit, but not a single person or canoe could be found. He embarked again at that part of the isles with great difficulty by the assistance of cork jackets and rope and the canoe. I supposed that the natives had left the island and I bore away to join the tender that had been sent to search for a channel into the lagoon near the northernmost isle; and after joining her I went once more towards the place we had first examined, and seeing no natives or any signs of them there I gave up the search.

On the 15th stood to the southward for Navigators' islands. I called the island the Duke of Clarence's Island. It lies in Latitude 9° 9′ 30″ and Longitude 171° 30′ 46″.[48-1] From the abundance of cocoanut trees both on this and the Duke of York's island, in the trunks of which holes were cut transversely to catch and preserve water, and as no other water was seen by us we supposed it was the only means they had of procuring that useful and necessary article. On the 18th in the forenoon we saw a very high island and as I supposed it to be a new discovery I called it Chatham island,[49-1] and standing in for it, I perceived a Bay towards the N.E. end and I made a tack to endeavour to look into it. Perceiving that I could not accomplish my intentions before night I bore away and ran along the shore and sent the tender to reconnoitre, and found, opposite to a sandy beach where there was an Indian town, she got 25 fathoms about a quarter of a mile from the reef, which runs off the place and carries soundings of sand regularly in to 5 fathoms.

In the morning a boat was sent to ground in an opening in the reef before the town, in which 3 fathoms of water was found, and 2½ fathoms within it. This harbour is situated on the North side near the middle, but rather nearest to the West end.[49-2] We were told that there was a river there, and another or two between it and the South end. We then ran round the West to the S.W. end of the island and in the bay there 25 fathoms of water was found, the bottom rather foul and bad landing for a ship's boat. The natives said there was another, but the boat being called on board by signal she did not dare to examine into the truth of their report. We found here a native of the Friendly Islands, who called himself Fenow, and a relation of the chief of that name of Tongataboo.[49-3] Fenow said he had seen Captain Cook and English ships at the Friendly Islands, and that the natives of this island had never seen a ship before they saw the Pandora. The island is more than 30 miles long. A high mountain [4000 feet] extends almost from one extremity to the other, which tapers down gradually at the ends and sides to the sea where it generally terminates in perpendicular cliffs of moderate height, except in a few places where there is a white beach of coral sand. The natives called the island Otewhy;[50-1] latitude of Northernmost point 13° 27′ 48″ S. Longitude 172° 32′ 13″ W. South Point Latitude 13° 46′ 18″ S., Longitude 172° 18′ 20″ W., and East point in Latitude 13° 32′ 20″ S. and Longitude 172° 2′ W.

On the 21st we saw another island [50-2] about 4 leagues to the Eastward of this, and there are two small islands between them, a small one in the middle and four off its East end, three of which are of considerable height. There is a greater variety of mountains and valleys in this than in Chatham's and it is exceedingly well wooded, and the trees of enormous size grow upon the very summits of the mountains with spreading heads resembling the oak. The same sort of trees were also seen in the same situation at Chatham, but not in so great abundance. This island is near forty miles long and of considerable breadth. The natives called it Oattooah.[50-3] Their canoes (although not so well finished), language and some of their customs much resemble those of the Friendly Islands, but they have some peculiar to themselves—that of dyeing their skins yellow and which is a mark of distinction amongst them is one of them.[50-4] The Latitude of the West point is 13° 52′ 25″ S. and Longitude 171° 49′ 13″ W. and the S.E. part in Latitude 14° 3′ 30″ S. and Longitude 171° 12′ 50″ W. As this island by our account was considerably to the Westward of the Navigators' islands, we at first supposed it to be a new discovery, but in visiting the other of the Navigators' islands discovered by Mons. Bougainville and running down again upon this we had reason to suppose that the S.E. end of Oattooah had been seen by him at a distance, and that it was the last island of the group that he saw.[51-1]

Between five and six o'clock of the evening of the 22nd June lost sight of our tender in a thick shower of rain. Some thought that they saw her light again at eight o'clock, but in the morning she was not to be seen. We cruised about for her in sight of the island on the 23rd and 24th and as I could not find the tender near the place where she was first lost, I thought it better to make the best of my way to Annamooka, the place appointed as a last rendezvous and to endeavour to get there before her, lest her small force should be a temptation to the natives to attack her, and accordingly we stood to the Southward.[51-2] When we were to the Eastward of Oattooah we saw another island bearing from us about E.S.E. eight leagues. We afterwards knew that this was one of the Navigators' islands seen by Mons. Bougainville. On the morning of the 28th we saw the Happy [Haapai] islands, and before noon a group of islands to the Eastward of Annamooka. We passed round to the Southward of these islands and ran down between little Annamooka and the Fallafagee isles and on the 29th anchored in Annamooka Road.

Whilst we were watering the ship, &c. I sent Lt. Hayward to the Happy [Haapai] Islands in a double canoe, which I hired of Tooboo a chief of these islands for the purpose of examining them and to make inquiries after the Bounty and the tender, but no intelligence could be got of either of these vessels at these two islands, nor at either of the Happy islands, and having completed our water and got a plentiful supply of yams and a few hogs, we sailed from thence on the 10th July. The natives were very daring in their thefts, but some of the articles stolen were recovered again by the chiefs, yet many of them were entirely lost, and as I did not think it proper to carry things to extremities on that occasion for fear that too much rigour might operate to the disadvantage of the tender should she arrive at the island in our absence, which I told them I expected she would do, and that I intended to return with the ship in about 20 days, and I left a letter of instructions for the tender with Moukahkahlah, a resident chief, which he promised to deliver. He is not the superior chief, but we found him most useful to us and I thought him the most worthy of trust.

Whilst we were at Annamooka, Fattahfahe [Fatafehi][52-1] the chief of all the islands, and who generally resides at Tongataboo or Amsterdam Island, came to visit us, as did also a great number of the chiefs from the adjacent islands and to all of whom I gave presents and also to such of their friends and attendances that were introduced for the purpose of receiving favours. A person called Toobou was the principal person in authority at Annamooka when we arrived there. I learned that he belonged to Tongataboo, and had little property on the island he governed, and I supposed that he was a deputy or minister of Fattahfahe who is generally acknowledged to be the superior chief of all the islands known under the names of the Friendly, Happy, and also of many other islands unknown to us. Fattahfahe and Toobou were on board the Pandora when she got under way, attended by two large double sailing canoes, the largest of which had upwards of 40 persons on board. I suppose that they came on board to take leave and in expectation of getting some additional farewell presents, in which they were not disappointed.

I knew that Fattahfahe was shortly going to make a tour of the Happy Islands, and as I perceived that he was exceedingly well pleased with what I had given him, and with his situation and accommodation on board the ship, I invited him to come with us to Toofoa [Tofoa] and Kaho [Kao], two islands I was then steering for and that I intended to visit, as I thought he would be useful by procuring us a favourable landing at Toofoa, the island whose inhabitants had behaved so treacherously to Lt. Bligh when he put in there for refreshments in the Bounty's launch. Before the sun set we got within a small distance of the island, but it was too late for our boats to go on shore, and the canoes were sent to the islands to announce the arrival of these great chiefs; their coming in the ship I made no doubt would increase their consequence, and probably also the tribute they might think proper to impose on their subjects.

The next morning Lt. Corner, attended by the two chiefs, was sent on shore at Toofoa to search and to make the necessary inquiries after the Bounty and our tender, &c. and then to cross the channel which is about three or four miles over, and to do the same at Kaho, and when I saw the boat put off from Toofoa and stand over for the other island I bore away with the ship and ran through the channel between the two islands. At four in the afternoon Lt. Corner, Fattahfahe and Toobou, returned on board without success in their search and inquiries. The two chiefs were put on board their canoes, and they made sail for the Happy Islands.[54-1]

I now intended to have visited Tongataboo and the other of the Friendly Islands, but, as the wind was Southerly and unfavourable for the purpose, I took the resolution once more to visit Oattooah, and also the Navigators' Islands in search of the Bounty and our tender and to endeavour to fall in to the eastward of those islands. On the morning of the 12th we discovered a cluster of islands bearing from us W. by S. to N.W. by N., but as the wind was favourable for us to proceed I did not think it proper to lose time in examining them now, but intended to do it on my return to the Friendly Islands.[55-1]

On the 14th, in the forenoon, we saw three islands, which we supposed to be the three first islands seen by Mons. Bougainville and part of the cluster called by him "Navigators' Islands," the largest of these islands the natives called Toomahnuah.[55-2] We passed them at a convenient distance and several canoes came towards the ship, and it was with great difficulty that we prevailed on them to come alongside, and still greater difficulty to get them into the ship. They brought very few things in their canoes except cocoanuts, which I bought, and then gave them a few things as presents before they left the ship, and after making the necessary inquiries as far as our limited knowledge of the language would permit us, I proceeded to the Westward and before daylight on the morning of the 15th we saw another island. We ran down on the North side of it and brought to occasionally to find and take on board canoes.

We found the same shyness amongst the natives here as at the last islands, but a few presents being given to them they at last ventured on board. The island is called by them Otootooillah.[55-3] It is at least 5 leagues long; we supposed it to be another of the islands seen by Mons. Bougainville. We got soundings in 53 fathoms water, and the depth decreased as we stood in shore, and there is probable anchorage on this side of the island sheltered from the prevailing winds, but we did not see the reef mentioned by Mons. Bougainville to run two leagues from the West end.

After making inquiries after the Bounty and tender and making presents to our visitors, we steered to the Westward, inclining to the North and before night saw Oattooa, bearing W.N.W. The South East end of this island was also probably seen by Mons. Bougainville, but by his description he could only have had a distant and a very imperfect view of the island. On the 16th we ran down on the South side of it, almost to the West end, and had frequent communication with the natives, but could get no information relative either to the Bounty or our tender. We saw a few of the natives with blue, mulberry and other coloured beads about their necks, and we understood that they got them from Cook at Tongataboo, one of the Friendly Islands. Having finished my business here, I stood to the Southward with the intention of visiting the group of islands we had discovered on our way hither, and we got sight of them again in the afternoon of the 18th.[56-1]

On the 19th, in the morning we ran down on the North side until we came to an opening through which we could see the sea on the opposite side, and a kind of sound is formed by some islands to the North East and some islands of considerable size to the South West, and in the intermediate space there are several small islands and rocks. On the larboard hand of the North entrance there is a shoal, on which the sea appears to break although there is from ten to twelve fathoms of water upon it. In the other part of the entrance there is forty fathoms of water or more. Our boat had only time to examine the entrance and the larboard side of the sound, in which there are interior bays where about 30 fathoms of water is to be found within a cables length of the shore. The branches of the sound on the starboard side, and which are yet unexamined, appear to promise better anchorage than was found on the opposite shore, and should it turn out so, it will be by far the safest and best anchorage hitherto known amongst the Friendly Islands.[57-1]

The natives told us there was good water at several places within the sound, and there is plenty of wood. Several of the inferior chiefs were on board us, amongst whom were one of Fattahfahe's and one of Toobou's family, but the principal chief of the island was not on board, but we supposed he was coming at the time we made sail.[57-2] They brought on board yams, cocoanuts, some bread fruit, and a few hogs and fowls, and would have supplied us with more hogs had it been convenient for us to have made a longer stay with them, and which they entreated us much to do. We found them very fair in their dealings, very inoffensive and better behaved than any savages we had yet seen.

They have frequent communication with Annamooka and the other Friendly Islands, and their customs and language appear to be nearly the same. I called the whole group Howe's Islands. The islands on the larboard side of the North entrance I distinguished by the names of Barrington [58-1] and Sawyer, two to the starboard side with the names of Hotham [58-2] and Jarvis.[58-3] A high island a considerable way to the North West I called Gardener's island,[58-4] and another high island to the South West was called Bickerton's island.[58-5] There is a small high isle about four miles to the S.W. of this, and a small low island about five or six miles to the S.E. by E. of Gardener's island,[58-6] and several islands to the S.E. of the islands forming the sound and too several small islands within it to which no names were given.

On the 20th at two in the morning, we passed within two miles of the small island that lies to the S.E. from Gardener's island, and soon after saw Gardener's island, on the N.W. side of which there appeared to be tolerable good landing on shingle beach, and a little to the right of this place, at the upper edge of the cliffs is a volcano, from which we observed the smoke issuing. There are recent marks of convulsion having happened in the island. Some parts of it appear to have fallen in, and other parts to be turned upside down. This part of the island is the most barren land we have seen in the country.[58-7] At nine o'clock thought we saw a large island bearing N. by W. and I made sail towards it, and as the weather was hazy we did not discover our mistake till near noon, when I hauled the wind to the Southward. On the 23rd saw an island from the masthead which I suppose was one of the Pylstaart islands.[59-1] On the 26th in the morning saw the island of Middleburgh and on the 27th ran in between Middleburgh, Eooa and Tongataboo.

Several canoes came on board us from the different islands. We were then within half a mile of the last, and equally near to the shoals of the second, but not so near to Middleburgh, yet we were near enough to see into English Road. At these islands we could neither see nor get any satisfactory information relative to the objects of our search. The natives brought in their canoes, yams, cocoanuts and a few small hogs, and I made no doubt that I should have been able to procure plenty of these articles had it been convenient for me to have stayed at these islands. The difficulty in getting in and out of the harbour and the indifferent quality of the water were alone sufficient objections against my stopping here. The road at Annamooka was more convenient for getting out and in, and the water, although not of the best quality, is reported to be better than that found at Amsterdam [Tongatabu], and Annamooka being the place I had appointed as a rendezvous for the tender I did not hesitate in giving the preference to it, and accordingly made the best of my way thither, and we saw the Fallafagee islands (which lie near Annamooka) [Kotu Group?] before dark, and also Toofoa, Kaho and Hoonga Tonga islands to the Westward, which are visible at a greater distance.

On the 28th July anchored in Annamooka Road. The person who now had the principal authority on the shore was a young chief whom we had not seen before. There was the same respect paid to him as was paid to Fattahfahe and to Toobou; neither of these chiefs nor Moukahkahlah were now in the islands, and the natives were now more daring in their thefts than ever, and would sometimes endeavour to take things by force, and robbed and stripped some of our people that were separated from the party. Lt. Corner, who commanded the watering and wooding parties on shore, received a blow on the head and was robbed of a curiosity he had bought and held in his hand, and with which the thief was making off. Lt. Corner shot the thief in the back, and he fell to the ground; at the same instant the natives attempted to take axes and a saw from the wooding party, and actually got off with two axes, one by force and the other by stealth, but they did not succeed in getting the saw. Two muskets were fired at the thieves, yet it was supposed that they were not hurt, but we are told that the other man died of his wound. One of the yawls was on shore at the time, and the long boat was landing near her with an empty cask. Lt. Corner drew the wooding and watering parties towards the boats and then began to load them with the wood that was cut.

A boat was sent from the ship to inquire the cause of the firing that was heard, but before she returned a canoe came from the shore to inform the principal chief (whom I had brought on board to dine with me) that one of the natives had been killed by our people. The chief was very much agitated at the information, and wanted to get out of the cabin windows into the canoe, but I would not suffer him to do it and told him I would go on shore with him myself in a little time in one of the ship's boats. Our boat soon returned and gave me an account of what had passed on shore. I told the chief that the Lieutenant had been struck, and that he and his party had been robbed of several things, and that I was very glad that the thief had been shot, and that I should shoot every person who attempted to rob us, but that no other person except the thief should be hurt by us on that account. The axes and some other things that had been stolen before were returned and very few robbings of any consequence were attempted and discovered until the day of our departure.

I took this opportunity of showing the chief what execution the cannon and carronades would do by firing a six-pound shot on shore and an eighteen-pounder carronade loaded with grape shot into the sea. I afterwards went on shore with two boats and took with me the chief and his attendants, and before I returned on board again told him that I should send on shore the next morning for water and wood, and that I should also come on shore myself in the course of the day, all which he approved of and desired me to do, and accordingly the next morning, the 31st July the watering and wooding parties were sent on shore and carried on their business without interruption, and in the afternoon I went on shore myself and made a small present to the chief and to some other people.

On the 2nd August, having completed my water, &c. and thinking it time to return to England I did not think proper to wait any longer for the tender, but left instructions for her commander should she happen to arrive after my departure, and I sailed from Annamooka, attended by a number of chiefs and canoes belonging to those and the surrounding islands. After the ship was under way some of the natives had the address to get in at the cabin windows and stole out of the cabin some books and other things, and they had actually got into their canoes before they were discovered. The thieves were allowed to make their escape, but the canoes that had stolen these things were brought alongside and broke up for firewood. During this transaction the other natives carried on their traffic alongside with as much unconcern as if nothing had happened.

I made farewell presents to all the chiefs and to many others of different descriptions, and after hauling round Annamooka shoals, passed to the Eastward of Toofoa and Kaho, and in the morning saw Bickerton's island and the small island to the Southward of it. On the 4th, in the evening, saw land bearing N.N.W. At first we took it to be Keppel's and Boscowen's islands, which I intended to visit, and by account was only a few miles to the Westward of them. As we approached the land we perceived that it was only one island, and as I supposed that it was a new discovery I called it Proby's island.[62-1] The hills, of which there are a great many of different heights and forms, are planted with cocoanuts and other trees, and the houses of a larger size than we had usually seen on the islands in these seas; were on the tops of hills of moderate height. We passed from S.E. end to the East, round to the North and N.W.

Landing appeared to be very indifferent until we came near the N.W., where the land formed itself into a kind of bay, and where the landing appeared to be better. The natives brought on board cocoanuts and plantains, all of which I bought, and made them a present of a few articles of iron. They told us that they had water, hogs, fowls and yams on shore and plenty of wood. They spoke nearly the same language as at the Friendly Islands. It lies in latitude 15° 53′ S. and longitude 175° 51′ W. I was now convinced that I was rather further to the Westward than I expected, and examining the island had carried me still further that way. I therefore gave up my intention of visiting Boscowen's and Keppel's islands,[63-1] as the regaining the Easting necessary would take up more time than would be prudent to allow at this advanced time of the season, and as soon as I had made the necessary inquiries, &c., after the Bounty, &c., our course was shaped with a view to fall in to the Eastward of Wallis' Island,[63-2] and the next day, the 5th, a little before noon saw that island bearing West by South, estimated by the master at ten leagues, but I did not myself suppose it to be more than seven leagues from us at that time.

Canoes came off to us and brought us cocoanuts and fish, which they sold for nails, and I also made them a present of some small articles which I always made a rule to do to first adventurers, hoping that it might turn out advantageous to future visitors, but they went away before I had given them all I intended. They told us that there was running water, hogs and fowls on shore. They spoke the language of the Friendly Islands, and I observed that one of the men had both of his little fingers cut off, and the flesh over his cheekbones very much bruised after the manner of the natives of those islands.[64-1]

In the evening I bore away and made sail to the Westward intending to run between Espiritu Santo and Santa Cruz, and to keep between the tracks of Captain Carteret and Lt. Bligh, and on the 8th at 10 at night saw land bearing from the W. by S. We had no ground at 110 fathoms. At daylight I bore away and passed round the East end and ran down on the South side of the island. There is a white beach on these parts of the island on which there appears to be tolerable good landing, or better than is usually seen on the islands in these seas, and there is probably anchorage in different places on this side or under the small islands, of which there are several near the principal island, but as I did not hoist out the boats to sound that still remains a doubt.

There are cocoanut trees all along the shore behind the beach, and an uncommon number of boughs amongst them. The island is rather high, diversified with hills of different forms, some of which might obtain the name of mountain, but they are cultivated up to their very summits with cocoanut trees and other articles, and the island is in general as well or better cultivated and its inhabitants more numerous for its size than any of the islands we have hitherto seen. The principal island is about 7 miles long and three or four broad, but including the islands off its East and West ends, and which latter are joined to it by a reef, it is about ten miles long. I called it Grenville Island [Rotuma], supposing it to be a new discovery. Its latitude is 12° 29′ and longitude 183° 03′ W.

A great number of paddling canoes came off and viewed the ship at a distance, and I believed that their intentions were at first hostile. They were all armed with clubs and they had a great quantity of stones in their canoes which they use in battle, and they all occasionally joined in a kind of war-whoop. We made signs of peace, and offered them a variety of toys which drew them alongside, and then into the ship where they behaved very quietly; probably the unexpected presents they got from us, and our number and strength might operate in favour of peace. However, they seemed to have the same propensity to thieving as the natives of the other islands, and gave us many, some of which ludicrous, examples.

Although at so great a distance they said that they were acquainted with the Friendly islands, and had learned from them the use of iron.[65-1] They were tattooed in a different manner from the natives of the other islands we had visited, having the figure of a fish, birds and a variety of other things marked upon their arms. Their canoes were not so delicately formed nor so well finished as at the Friendly islands, but more resemble those of the Duke of York's, the Duke of Clarence's and the Navigators' islands. Neither sailing or double canoes came on board, neither did we see any of either of these descriptions. They told us that water and many other useful things, the usual produce of the islands in these seas, could be procured on shore.

Their language appeared something to resemble that spoken at the Friendly islands, and after asking them such questions as we thought necessary, some of which probably were not understood perfectly by them, or their answers by us, we made sail and continued our course to the Westward. No women were seen in the canoes that visited us, which curiosity or the hope of getting some pleasing toys usually bring to our side, but this is another proof that their original intentions were hostile. We passed the island in so short a time that those who neglected to come out at our first appearance had not afterwards the opportunity to visit us.

On the 11th at eleven o'clock in the morning we struck soundings on a bank in twelve to fourteen fathoms water and at ten minutes after eleven had no ground in one hundred and forty fathoms. No land was then in sight, nor did we get any soundings after in the course of the day. It was called Pandora's Bank, its Latitude 12° 11′ S. and Longitude 188° 68′ W.

On the next morning saw a small island which met in two high hummocks and a steeple rock which lies high on the West side of the hummocks. It obtained the name of Mitre Island. The shore appeared to be steep to, and we had no bottom at 120 fathoms within three quarters of a mile of the shore. There was no landing place or sign of inhabitants. The tops of the hills were covered with wood. There was also some on the sides, but not in so great an abundance they being too steep and too bare of soil in some places to support it. Latitude 11° 49′ S. and Longitude 190° 04′ 30″ W.[67-1]

By nine o'clock we had passed it and steered to the Westward, and soon afterwards we saw another island bearing N.W. by N. We hauled up to the N.W. to make it out more distinctly as it is of considerable height, yet not much more than a mile long, and the top and the side of the hills very well cultivated and a number of houses were seen near the beach in a bay on the South side of the island. The beach from the East round to the South of the West end is of white sand, but there was then too much surf for the ship's boat to land upon it with safety. I called it Cherry's Island [Native name: Anula]. Its Latitude is 11° 37′ S. and Longitude 190° 19′ 30″ W.[67-2]

On the 13th August a little before noon we saw an island bearing about N.W. by N. In general it is high, but to the West and North West the mountain tapered down to a round point of moderate height. It abounds with wood, even the summits of the mountain are covered with trees. In the S.E. end there was the appearance of a harbour, and from that place the reef runs along the South side to the Westernmost extremity. In some places its distance is not much more than a mile from the shore, in other places it is considerably more. Although we were sometimes within less than a mile of the reef we saw neither house nor people. The haziness of the weather prevented us from seeing objects distinctly, yet we saw smoke very plain, from which it may be presumed that the island is inhabited. It is six or seven leagues long and of considerable breadth. I called it Pitt's Island. Its Latitude is 11° 50′ 30″ S. South point, and Longitude 193° 14′ 15″ W.[68-1]

At midnight between the 16th and 17th of August breakers were discovered ahead and upon our bow, and not a mile from us. We were lying to and heaving the lead at the time and had no ground at 120 fathoms. We wore the ship and stood from them and in less than an hour after more breakers were seen extending more than a point before our lee beam, but we made more sail and so got clear of them all. At daylight we put about with the intention of examining the breakers we had seen in the night and we made two boards, but perceiving that I could not weather them without some risk I bore up and ran round its N.W. end. It is a double reef enclosing a space of deeper water like the lagoon islands so common in these seas, and probably will become one in the course of time. The sea breaks pretty high upon it in different parts, but there is no part of the reef absolutely above water. It is about seven miles long in the direction of N.W. by N. Its breadth is not so much. Called it Willis's shoal. It lies in Latitude 12° 20′ S. and Longitude 200° 2′ W.[69-1]

We pursued our course to the Westward and on the 23rd saw the land bearing from N.E. to N. by W. The Easternmost land when first seen was ten or twelve leagues from us and it cannot be far to the Westward of the land seen by Mons. Bougainville and called by him Louisiade, and probably joins to it. The cape is in Latitude 10° 3′ 32″ S. and Longitude 212° 14′ W., was called Cape Rodney and another cape in Latitude 9° 58′ S. and Longitude 212° 37′ W. was called Cape Hood, and an island lying between them was called Mount Clarence. After passing Cape Hood the land appears lower and to branch off about N.N.W. and to form a deep and wide bay, or perhaps a passage through, for we saw no other land, and there are doubts whether it joins New Guinea or not.[69-2]

I pursued my course to the Westward between the Latitudes of 10° and 9° 33′ S. keeping the mouth of Endeavour Straits open, by which I hoped to avoid the difficulties and dangers experienced by Captain Cook in his passage through the reef in a higher latitude, and also the difficulties he met with when within in his run from thence to the Strait's mouth.[70-1]

On the 25th August at 9 in the morning, saw breakers from the mast head bearing from us W. by S. to W.N.W. I hauled up to the Southward and passed to the Eastward of them. It runs in the direction of W.S.W. and E.N.E. 4′ or 5′, and another side runs in the direction of N.W. the distance unknown. The sea broke very moderately upon it, in some places barely perceptibly. In the interior part a very small sand-bank was seen from the mast-head, and no other part of the reef was above water. It obtained the name of Look-Out shoal.[70-2]

Before noon we saw more breakers which proved to be one of those half-formed islands enclosing a lagoon, the reef of which was composed principally of very large stones, but a sandbank was seen from the mast head extending to the Southward of it, and as I could not weather it and seeing another opening to the Westward, I steered to the W.S.W., and a little before two o'clock saw the island to the Westward of us, and another reef bearing about S.W. by South and I then steered W. ½ N. until half past five, when a reef was seen extending from the island a considerable way to the N.W., the island bearing then about W.S.W. I immediately hauled upon the wind in order to pass to the Southward of it, and seeing a passage to the Northward obstructed [71-1] I stood on and off, and was still during the night, and in the morning bore away; but as we drew near we also saw a reef extending to the Southward from the South end of the island. I ran to the Southward along the reef with the intention and expectation of getting round it, and the whole day was spent without succeeding in my purpose and without seeing the end of the reef, or any break in it that gave the least hopes of a channel fit for a ship.[71-2]

The islands, which I called Murray's Islands, are four in number, two of them are of considerable height and may be seen twelve leagues. The principal island is not more than three miles long. It is well wooded and at the top of the highest hill the rocks have the appearance of a fortified garrison. The other high island is only a single mountain almost destitute of trees and verdure. The other two are only crazy barren rocks. We saw three two mast boats under sail near the reef, which we supposed belong to the islands. Murray Islands lie in Latitude 9° 57′ S. and Longitude 216° 43′ W. We kept turning to the Southward along the reef until the 28th in search of a channel and in the forenoon of that day we thought we saw an opening through the reef near a white sandy island or key, and a little before Lt. Corner was sent in the yawl to examine it. At three quarters past four he made the signal that there was a channel through the reef fit for a ship, and after a signal was made and repeated for the boat to return on board, and after dark false fires and muskets were fired from the ship, and answered with muskets by the boat repeatedly to point out the situation of each other. We sounded frequently but had no ground at 110 fathoms.

At about twenty minutes after seven the boat was seen close in under our stern and at the same time we got soundings in 50 fathoms water. We immediately made sail, but before the tacks were on board and the sails trimmed the ship struck upon the reef when we were getting 4¼ less 2 fathoms water on the larboard side, and 3 fathoms on the starboard side. Got out the boats with a view to carrying out an anchor, but before it could be effected the ship struck so heavily on the reef that the carpenters reported that she made 18 inches of water in five minutes, and in five minutes after there was four feet of water in the hold. Finding the leak increase so fast found it necessary to turn all hands to the pumps and to bale at the different hatchways. She still continued to gain upon us so much that under an hour and a half after she had struck there was eight feet of water in the hold, and we perceived that the ship had beat over the reef where we had 10 fathoms water. We let go the small bower and veered away the cable and let go the best bower under foot in 15 fathoms water to steady the ship. At this time the water only gained upon us in a small degree and we flattered ourselves for some time that by the assistance of a top sail which we were preparing and intended to haul under the ship's bottom we might be able to free her of water, but these flattering hopes did not continue long, for as she settled in the water the leaks increased and in so great a degree that there was reason to apprehend that she would sink before daylight.

In the course of the night two of the pumps were for some time rendered useless, one, however was repaired, and we continued baling and pumping the remainder of the night and every effort was made to keep her afloat.[73-1] Daylight fortunately appeared and gave us the opportunity to see our situation and the surrounding danger. Our boats were kept astern of the ship; a small quantity of provisions and other necessaries were put into them, rafts were made, and all floating things upon the deck were unlashed. At half past six the hold was filled with water, and water was between decks and it also washed in at the upper deck ports, and there were strong indications that the ship was upon the very point of sinking, and we began to leap overboard and to take to the boats, and before everybody could get out of her the ship actually sank.[73-2] The boats continued astern on the ship in the direction of the drift of the tide from here, and took up the people that had held on to the rafts or other floating things that had been cast loose for the purpose of supporting them in the water.[74-1]

We loaded two of the boats with people and sent them to the island, or rather key, about three or four miles from the ship, and then other two boats remained near the ship for some time and picked up all the people that could be seen and then followed the two first boats to the key, and after landing the people, &c. the boats were immediately sent again to look about the wreck and the adjoining reefs for missing people, but they returned without having found a single person. On mustering we discovered that 89 of the ship's company and 10 of the pirates that were on board were saved, and that 31 [74-2] of the ship's company and 4 pirates were lost with the ship. The boats were hauled up and secured to fit them for the intended run to Timor; an account was taken of the provision and other articles saved, and they were spread to dry, and we put ourselves to the following allowance, to 3 ounces of bread, which was occasionally reduced to 2 ounces, to half an ounce of portable soup, to half an ounce of essence of malt, (but these two articles were not served until after we left the key, and they were at other times withheld), to two small glasses of water and one of wine.

On the afternoon of the 30th sent a boat to the wreck to see if anything could be procured. She returned with the head of the T.G. mast, a little of the T.G. rigging, and part of the chain of the lightning conductor, but without a single article of provision. The boat was also sent to examine the channel through the reef &c. and was afterwards sent a-fishing. She lost her grapnel, but no fish were caught.

On the 31st the boats were completed and were launched, and we put everything we had saved on board of them and at half past ten in the forenoon we embarked, 30 on board the launch, 25 in the pinnace, 23 in one yawl and 21 in the other yawl.[75-1] We steered N.W. by W. and W.N.W. within the reef. This channel through the reef is better than any hitherto known, besides the advantage it has of being situated further to the North, by which many difficulties would be avoided when within the reef. In the run from thence to the entrance of Endeavour Straits there is a small white island or key on the larboard end of the channel, which lies in Latitude 11° 23′ S., the sides are strong and irregular.

On the 1st September in the morning saw land, which probably was the continent of New South Wales. The yawls were sent on shore to ground and look out. They saw a run of water, landed and filled their two barricois, which were the only vessels of consequence they had with them, and I steered for an island called by Lt. Bligh Mountainous Island, and when joined by the boats ran into a bay of that island where we saw Indians on the beach. The water was shoal and the Indians waded off to the boats. I gave them some presents and made them sensible that we were in want of water. They brought us a vessel filled with water which we had given them for the purpose, and they returned to fill it again. They used many signs to signify that they wished us to land, but we declined their invitation from motives of prudence.

Just as a person was entering the water with the second vessel of fresh water, an arrow was discharged at us by another person, which struck my boat on the quarter, and perceiving that they were collecting bows and arrows a volley of small arms was fired at them which put them to flight. I did not think proper to land and get water by force as land was seen at that time in different directions, which by appearance was likely to produce that article, and which I flattered myself we might be able to procure without being drove to that extremity. I therefore ran close along the shore of this island and landed at different places at some distance from the former situation. I also landed at another island near it which I called Plum Island [77-1] from its producing a species of that fruit, but we were unsuccessful in finding the article we were in search of, and in so much want of.

In the evening we steered for the islands which we supposed were those called by Captain Cook the Prince of Wales' Islands, and before midnight came to a grapnel with the boats near one of these islands, in a large sound formed by several of the surrounding islands, to several of which we gave names, and called the sound Sandwich Sound.[77-2] It is fit for the reception of ships, having from five to seven fathoms of water. There is plenty of wood on most of the islands, and by digging we found very good water. On the flat part of a large island which I called Lafory's Island,[77-3] situated on the larboard hand as we entered the sound from the Eastward we saw a burying place and several wolves [77-4] near the watering place, but we saw no natives. Here we filled our vessels with water and made two canvas bags in which we also put water, but with this assistance we had barely the means to take a gallon of water for each man in the boats. We sent our kettles on shore and made tea and portable broth, and a few oysters were picked off the rocks with which we made a comfortable meal, indeed the only one we had made since the day before we left the ship.

On the 2nd September at half past three in the afternoon we stood out of the North entrance of the sound. Before five we saw a reef extending from the North to the W.N.W. and which appeared to run in the latter direction or more to the Westward.[77-5] On the edge of this reef we had 3¼ fathoms of water and after hauling to the S.W. we soon deepened our water to 5 fathoms. Besides Mountainous and West Islands seen by Lt. Bligh we saw several other islands between the North and the West, one of which I called Hawkesbury Island. We saw several large turtle.

In the evening we saw the Northernmost extremity of New South Wales, which forms the South side of Endeavour Straits. At night the boats took each other in tow and we steered to the Westward.

It is unnecessary to retail our particular sufferings in the boats during our run to Timor and it is sufficient to observe that we suffered more from heat and thirst than from hunger, and that our strength was greatly decreased.[78-1] We fortunately had good weather, and the sea was generally not very rough, and the boats were more buoyant and lively in the water that we reasonably could have expected considering the weight and numbers we had in them.

At seven o'clock in the morning of the 13th September we saw the island of Timor bearing N.W. We continued our course to the W.N.W. till noon, but the other boats hauled for the land and we separated from them. At one o'clock we were well in with the land and a party was sent on shore in search of water, but none was found here, nor at several other places we examined as we passed along the coast, until the next morning, when good water was found. We also bought a few small fish, which when divided afforded some two or three ounces per man. Here the launch joined us again. They informed us that they had got a supply of water the evening before.

On the 15th in the morning saw the island of Rotte. At half past three in the afternoon entered the Straits of Samoa. Before midnight we came to a grapnel off the float or Coopang and found here one ship, a ketch and two or three small craft. The launch separated from us soon after dark to get up to Coopang the next day in the forenoon. On the morning of the 16th by our account (which was the 17th in this country) at daylight we hailed the fort and informed them whom we were. A small boat was sent to us, and myself and Lt. Hayward landed at the usual place near the Chinese Temple where we were received by the Lt. Governor, Mr. Fruy and Mr. Bouberg, Capt. Lieutenant of a Company ship that lay in the road, and conducted by them to Governor Wanjon, who received us with great humanity and goodness of heart. Refreshments were immediately prepared for myself and the lieutenant. Provision was provided, the people ordered to land, and they all dined in the Governor's own house, and an arrangement was made for the reception and accommodation of the whole party as they arrived.

The church and the church-yard was assigned for the use of the private seamen, a house was hired for the warrant and petty officers. The people that were ill were put under the care of Mr. Zimers, the Surgeon-General. Governor Wanjon did me and Lt. Hayward the honour of lodging and entertaining us in his own house. Mr. Corner, the second Lieutenant and Mr. Bentham, the Purser, were received in the house of Mr. Fruy, the Lieutenant-Governor. Lt. Larkin and Mr. Passmore were taken into the house of Mr. Brouberg, the Captain-Lieutenant of the Company ship, and Mr. Hamilton, the surgeon, was accommodated in the house of Mr. Zimers, the Surgeon-General, and Governor Wanjon did everything in his power to supply our present wants, or that would contribute to the re-establishment of our health and strength and even to our amusement, and this benevolent example was followed by Mr. Fruy, the Lieutenant-Governor and the other gentlemen of the place. Two months' provision was provided for the ship's company and put on board the Remberg [Rembang], a Dutch East India Company ship, and we embarked on board the same ship for Batavia on the 6th October, 1791.[80-1]

Before we sailed Governor Wanjon delivered to me eight men, one woman and two children who came to Coopang in June last in a six-oared cutter. They are supposed to be late deserters from the colony at Port Jackson. Food bills were given on the different departments of the Navy for the provisions and other necessaries we were supplied with at Coopang and also for the maintenance and cloathing of the convicts. I sold one of the yawls to the Lieutenant-Governor and the longboat and the other yawl to the Commander of the Remberg, the ship in which we embarked. The latter was not to be delivered up until I left Batavia, and I shall make myself accountable to the Commissioners of His Majesty's Navy for the amount. As I could take no more boats with me and the pinnace being out of repair, I left her with the Governor Wanjon with permission to do with her what he thought proper.

We stopped at Samarang, being an island of Java, where we had the good fortune to be joined by our tender that had separated from us off the island of Oattoah. She had all her people on board except one man, whom they had buried a few days before. She had been stopped at Java on suspicion, and they were going to send her to Batavia. Mr. Overstratin, the Governor of the place, delivered her up to me. The tender had contracted a small debt for provisions &c. at Java, which I shall discharge. She fell in to the Westward of Annamooka, the island I had appointed to rendezvous on, without seeing it, and then steered two days to the Westward nearly in its latitude and fell in with an island which I suppose must be one of the Fiji Islands, where they had waited for me five weeks, and then proceeded through Endeavour Straits and intended to stop at Batavia. With the iron and salt I had provided them with they were enabled to procure and preserve sufficient provision for their run to Java.

I arrived at Batavia on the 7th November and on application to the Governor and Council my people were put on board a Dutch East India Company's ship that was lying in the Road to be kept there until they could be sent to Europe, and the sick were ordered to be received by the Company's hospital at Batavia, and I have since agreed with the Dutch East India Company to divide my ship's company into four parts, and to embark them on board four of their ships for Holland at no expense to the Government further than for the officers and prisoners, which appeared to me to be the most eligible and least expensive way of getting to England. Lt. Larkin, two petty officers, and eighteen seamen embarked on the Zwan, a Dutch East India ship on the 19th November and are sailing for Europe, and myself and the remainder of the Pandora's company and the prisoners are to embark as soon as their ships are manned. Myself and the pirates are to embark on board the Vreedenberg, Captain Christian and I have stipulated that myself and the prisoners may be at liberty to go on board any of His Majesty's ships, or other vessels we may meet with on mine or my officer's application for the purpose.

Enclosed is the latitudes and longitudes of several islands, &c. we discovered during our voyage, the state of the Pandora's company, a list of pirates belonging to the Bounty, taken at Otaheite and a list of convicts, deserters from the colony at Port Jackson. It may be necessary to observe that these last have several names, and that William Bryant and James Cox pretend that their time of transportation has expired, but these two then found a boat and money to procure necessaries to enable themselves and others to escape, for which I presume they are liable to punishment, and think it my duty to give information.

Although I have not had the good fortune to fully accomplish the object of my voyage, and that it has in other respects been strongly marked with great misfortunes, I hope it will be thought that the first is not for want of perseverence, or the latter for want of the care and attention of myself and those under my command, but that the disappointment and misfortune arose from the difficulties and peculiar circumstances of the service we were upon; that those of my orders I have been able to fulfil, with the discoveries that have been made will be some compensation for the disappointment and misfortunes that have attended us, and should their Lordships upon the whole think that the voyage will be profitable to our country it will be a great consolation to,

Sir,

Your most humble and obedient servant,
Edw. Edwards.

Philip Stevens Esq."

"Cape of Good Hope,
19th March, 1792.

Sir,

Agreeable to my intentions which I did myself the honour to signify to you in a letter addressed from Batavia and sent by a Dutch packet bound to Europe, I embarked the remainder of the Company of His Majesty's ship Pandora, pirates late belonging to the Bounty and the convicts deserters from Port Jackson, on board three Dutch East India ships as follows:—

Myself, the master, Purser, Gunner, Clerk, two midshipmen, twentyone seamen, and ten pirates on board the Vreedenburg, bound to Amsterdam.

Lt. Corner, the surgeon, three midshipmen, fourteen seamen, and half the convicts on board the Horssen, bound to Rotterdam, and Lt. Hayward, the boatswain, surgeon's mate, three midshipmen, fifteen seamen and the other half of the convicts on board the Hoornwey, bound to Rotterdam.

Lt. Larkin with two petty officers and eighteen seamen were embarked on board the Zwan and sailed from Batavia previous to the date of my former letter, and I am now informed that she has been at this port and sailed from hence for Europe more than a month before my arrival.

I found His Majesty's Ship Gorgon here on her return from Port Jackson, and on account both of expedition and greater security I intend to avail myself of the opportunity to embark on board of her with the ten pirates for England, and I request that you will be pleased to communicate the circumstances to My Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty.

I have the honour to be, Sir,

Your most obedient and humble servant,
Edw. Edwards."

"Admiralty Office,
June, 19th 1792.

Sir,

I beg leave to inform you that I found His Majesty's Ship Gorgon at the Cape of Good Hope on my arrival there in the Vreedenburg, a Dutch East India Company's ship, from Batavia, and I thought it proper to remove the pirates late belonging to His Majesty's armed vessel, the Bounty, and the convicts, deserters from Port Jackson (whom I had under my charge on board the Dutch East India Company's ships) into His Majesty's said ship, for their greater security, and I took the same opportunity myself to embark on board on her for England and I hope that these steps will be approved of by their Lordships.

I gave you an account of my arrival at the Cape of Good Hope and of my intentions to embark on board the Gorgon with the pirates, convicts, &c. in a letter which I did myself the honour to address to you from thence and sent by the Baring, Thomas Fingey, Master, an American ship bound to Ostend.

Inclosed is the state of the company of His Majesty's Ship Pandora at the time I left the Cape of Good Hope, and the manner in which they were disposed of on board Dutch East India Company's ships in order to be brought to Europe and also a list of the pirates late belonging to the Bounty, and of the convicts, deserters from Port Jackson, delivered to me by Mr. Wanjon, the Governor of the Dutch settlements in the island of Timor, now on board His Majesty's Ship Gorgon.

I arrived yesterday evening at St. Helens, left the Gorgon, and landed at Portsmouth last night and I am now at this office awaiting their Lordships' Commands.

And I have the honour to be, Sir,

Your most obedient and humble servant,
Edw. Edwards.

Philip Stevens, Esq."

A list of convicts, deserters from Port Jackson, delivered to Captain Edward Edwards of His Majesty's Ship Pandora by Timotheus Wanjon, Governor of the Dutch Settlements at Timor, 5th October, 1791.

William Allen, On board H.M.S. Gorgon.
John Butcher, On board H.M.S. Gorgon.
Nathaniel Lilley, On board H.M.S. Gorgon.
James Martin, On board H.M.S. Gorgon.
Mary Bryant. Transported by the name of Mary Broad. On board H.M.S. Gorgon.
William Morton, Dd on board Dutch East India Co.'s ship, Hoornwey.
William Bryant, Dd 22nd December 1791, Hospital Batavia.
James Cox, Dd, fell overboard Straits of Sunda.
John Simms, Dd on board Dutch East India Co.'s ship Hoornwey.
Children of the above William and Mary Bryant.
- Emanuel Bryant, Dd 1st December 1791, Batavia.
- Charlotte Bryant, Dd 6th May 1792 on board H.M.S. Gorgon.

Edw. Edwards.

A list of one Petty Officer and four Seamen lost in a cutter belonging to His Majesty's Ship Pandora, at Palmerston's Island on the 24th May, 1791.

John Sival, Midshipman.
James Good, Seamen.
William Wasdel, Seamen.
James Scott, Seamen.
Joseph Cunningham, Seamen.

Edw. Edwards.

List of Pirates late belonging to His Majesty's ship Bounty taken by His Majesty's Ship Pandora, Captain Edward Edwards, at Otaheite.

Joseph Coleman, On Board H.M.S. Gorgon.
Peter Haywood, On Board H.M.S. Gorgon.
Michael Burn, On Board H.M.S. Gorgon.
James Morrison, On Board H.M.S. Gorgon.
Charles Norman, On Board H.M.S. Gorgon.
Thomas Ellison, On Board H.M.S. Gorgon.
Thomas MacIntosh, On Board H.M.S. Gorgon.
William Muspratt, On Board H.M.S. Gorgon.
Thomas Burkitt, On Board H.M.S. Gorgon.
John Millward, On Board H.M.S. Gorgon.
George Stewart, 29th August 1791, lost with ship.
Richard Skinner, 29th August 1791, lost with ship.
Henry Heilbrant, 29th August 1791, lost with ship.
John Sumner, 29th August 1791, lost with ship.

(Signed) Edward Edwards.

State of the Company of H.M.S. Pandora, Captain Edward Edwards: and the manner disposed of on board Dutch East India Company's Ships for their voyage to Europe.

	Com. Off. & Master.	Warrant Officers.	Petty Officers.	Seamen.
Zwan, Lt. John Larkan,	1		2	17
Horssen, Lt. Robert Corner,	1	1	2	13
Mr. George Hamilton Surgeon.
Hornwey, Lt. Thos. Hayward,
John Cunningham, Boatswain,	1	1	2	14
Vreedenberg, Mr. G. Passmore, Master,
Mr. Gregory Bentham, Purser, Mr. Jos.	1	2	1	18
Parker gunner and 1 Supernumary belonging to H.M. armed vessel Supply.
Hospital at Batavia,				1
H.M.S. Gorgon, Captain Edwards,	1		2	1
	5	4	9	64

Whole Number borne,	82
Died since ship was lost,	16
Discharged,	1
	——
Whole number Ship's company saved in ship and tender	99
Supernumaries.
Do. Pirates,	10
Convicts, 4 men and 1 woman	5

Edward Edwards.

"No. 8, Craven Street,
Strand,
9th July, 1792.

Sir,

I beg leave to acquaint you that I have information that the Vreedenburg and the Horssen, two Dutch East India Company's ships, on board of which part of the company of His Majesty's ship Pandora are embarked, were off the Start on the 5th of this month, on their way to Holland, and that the Hoornwey, the ship on board which the remainder of the company of the Pandora were embarked, was expected to sail from the Cape of Good Hope in about three weeks after the two former ships left that place, but the account does not mention the day they left the Cape themselves.

I have the honour to be, Sir,

Your most obedient and humble servant,
Edward Edwards."

List of islands and places discovered by H.M.S. Pandora, with their latitudes and longitudes.

Names of Islands.	Lat. S.	Long. W.
Ducie Island,	24° 40′ 30″	124° 40′ 30″
Lord Hood's Island,	21° 31′ 00″	135° 32′ 30″
Carysfort Island,	20° 49′ 00″	138° 33′ 00″
Duke of Clarence Island,	9° 09′ 30″	171° 30′ 46″
Otewhy or Chatham,	13° 32′ 30″	172° 18′ 25″
Howe's Isles,	18° 32′ 30″	173° 53′ 00″
Gardener's Isles,	17° 57′ 00″	175° 16′ 54″
Bickerton's Isle,	18° 47′ 40″	174° 48′ 00″
Onooafow or Probys Isle,	15° 53′ 00″	175° 51′ 00″
Rotumah or Grenville Isles,	12° 29′ 00″	183° 03′ 00″
Pandora's Bank,	12° 11′ 00″	188° 08′ 00″
Mitre Island,	11° 49′ 00″	190° 04′ 30″
Cherry Island,	11° 37′ 30″	190° 19′ 30″
Pitt's Isle (South Point),	11° 50′ 30″	193° 14′ 05″
Wells Shoal on reef,	12° 20′ 00″	202° 02′ 00″
Cape Rodney,	10° 03′ 32″	212° 14′ 05″
Mount Clarence between the two Orayas.
Cape Hood,	9° 58′ 06″	212° 37′ 10″
Look Out Shoal.
Stoney Reef Islands.
Murray's Islands,	9° 57′ 00″	216° 43′ 00″
Wreck Reef.
Escape Key,	11° 23′ 00″
Entrance Key,	11° 23′ 00″

Edward Edwards.

A list of 14 pirates, belonging to H.M.S. late ship Bounty, taken at Otaheite.

Joseph Coleman.
Peter Haywood.
Michael Byrne.
James Morrison.
Charles Norman.
Thomas Ellison.
Thomas M'Intosh.
William Muspratt.
Thomas Burkitt.
John Millward.
George Stewart, D/d drowned August 29th 1791.
Richard Skinner, D/d drowned August 29th 1791.
Henry Hillbrant, D/d drowned August 29th 1791.
John Sumner, D/d drowned August 29th 1791.

Edward Edwards.

FOOTNOTES:

[30-1] They sighted Easter Island on March 4th, 1791, Ducie's Island on the 16th, Hoods' Island on the 17th, and Carysfort on the 19th. The latitude and description of Ducie's Island leaves little doubt that it was the first island discovered by Quiros on January 26th, 1606 and called by him Luna Puesta. It appears as Encarnaçion in Espinosa's chart. Quiros thus describes it: "A buen juzgar dista de Lima ochocientas leguas: tiene cinco de boj, mucha arboleda y playas de arena, y junto á tierra fondo de ochenta brazas." Had Edwards but sailed due west from Ducie Island he must have sighted Pitcairn and discovered the hiding-place of Fletcher Christian's ill-fated colony.

[31-1] An American vessel.

[33-1] Morrison was Boatswain's Mate of the Bounty. He had previously served as midshipman in the navy, and by talent and education he was far above the station he held in Bligh's ship. It was he who planned and directed the building of the fast-sailing little schooner which acted as the Pandora's tender, was the first vessel to anchor in Fiji, and made the record passage from China to the Sandwich Islands. Morrison was chaplain as well as foreman to the little band of shipwrights. On Sundays he hoisted the English colours on a staff and read the Church Service to them. He kept a journal, not only throughout the Bounty's cruise, but during his sojourn with the mutineers in Tahiti, and, though it is not explained how he contrived to preserve it through the wreck of the Pandora and the boat voyage, there can be no doubt that it was a genuine document. At Captain Heywood's death it passed with his other papers to his daughters. This journal has been annotated and corrected by another hand, probably Heywood's own, but without material alteration of the sense. It is filled with acrimony against Bligh from the outset of the Bounty's cruise, and the form of the entries shows that it was intended to be the basis for laying serious charges against him when the ship was paid off. It is needless to add that it does not spare Edwards in respect of his treatment of his prisoners.

[36-1] The Pandora found one of them at Palmerston Island.

[37-1] Executed at Portsmouth.

[37-2] Pardoned.

[37-3] Acquitted.

[37-4] Drowned in the wreck of the Pandora.

[37-5] Morrison said that his plan was to reach Batavia in time to secure a passage home in the next fleet bound to Holland, and that the return to Tahiti was occasioned, not by any distrust of his talents, but by the refusal of the natives, who were anxious to keep them in Tahiti, to victual the ship for so long a voyage. There were no casks on the schooner for storing water. Morrison, Heywood and Stewart had planned an escape from Tubuai in the Bounty's boat, but, fortunately for them—since the attempt would have been certain death—their plan was discovered and frustrated by the other mutineers.

[38-1] Oliver, master's mate; Renouard, midshipman; James Dodds, quartermaster; and six seamen.

[40-1] Oatafu, one of the Union Group, discovered by Commodore Byron in 1765. If the mutineers had settled there they would have starved, for there is neither food nor water. Since Byron's discovery a native settlement has been made from Bowditch Island (Fakaago), and the people, about 100 in number, live on fish, pandanus, and water caught in holes cut on the lee side of the cocoa-palms.

[40-2] The northernmost island of the Cook Group, discovered by Bligh, April 11, 1798, a few days before the mutiny. In 1823 John Williams, the missionary, heard at Rarotonga a native tradition of Bligh's visit. The natives heard the first rumours of a world beyond their own from two Tahitian castaways who had seen Captain Cook, and had with them an iron hatchet obtained from the Resolution. They represented the strange beings who traversed the ocean in vast canoes, not lashed with sinnet nor furnished with outriggers, as impious people who laughed at the tabu, and even ate of the consecrated food from the Maraés. They were like the gods; if they were attacked they blew at their assailants with long blow-pipes (pupuhi) from which flames and stones were belched. Such were the Tutë (Cooks). Thereafter, having need of iron (kurima) and other wonders current in Tahiti the men of Aitutaki prayed to their gods to send the Tutë to their island with axes and nails and pupuhi, and this, according to an old priest, was their prayer. "O great Tangaroa, send your large ship to our land: let us see the Cookees. Great Tangiia, send us a dead sea, send us a propitious gale, to bring the far-famed Cookees to our land, to give us nails and iron and axes; let us see these outriggerless canoes." And with the feast presented with the prayer were promises of greater feasts so soon as their prayer was answered. The gods heard them. A few months later the Cookees came. The great ship did not anchor, but one of the natives took his courage in both hands, and went off in his canoe. He brought back strange tales of what he had seen. It was a floating island; there were two rivers flowing on it (the pumps), and two plantations in which grew taro and sugar-cane and bread-fruit, and the keel scraped the bottom of the sea, for he dived as deep as he could go without finding it.

Williams has fallen into two errors in his account ([p. 171]). In the same breath he claims for himself the discovery of Rarotonga, in 1823, and announces this to have been a visit of the Bounty after she was taken by the mutineers, i.e. in April, 1789. Rarotonga was, in fact, discovered by the ship Seringapatam in 1814, though Williams may have been the first to land. The tradition must have referred to Bligh's visit to Aitutaki before the mutiny when the decks were encumbered with bread-fruit, for we know that the first thing the mutineers did after setting their captain adrift was to throw all the bread-fruit plants overboard, and that they steered direct for Tahiti.

[42-1] Discovered by Cook in his second voyage. There are nine small islands connected by a reef, covered with trees, but destitute of water.

[43-1] Sufficient for thirty days at most. In the face of the danger of parting company, with the Pandora overloaded with stores, and the tender too feebly manned to wait at so dangerous a rendezvous as the Friendly Islands, Edwards showed very little foresight in neglecting to provision the tender for an independent voyage. His neglect nearly cost the crew their lives.

[44-1] See [p. 126].

[46-1] Fakaafo or Bowditch Island, whence the present permanent inhabitants migrated.

[46-2] Nukunono, a new discovery, another of the Union Group. It was surveyed by the American Exploring Expedition in 1840, and was found to be 7-2/10 miles long, N. and S., and 5 miles E. and W.

[48-1] The actual position is 9·5′ S. Latitude and 171·38′ W. Longitude.

[49-1] Savaii in the Samoa Group. If not the 'Beauman' Islands seen by Roggewein in 1721, they were discovered by Bougainville in 1768 and visited by La Pérouse in 1787. Freycinet also visited them before Edwards.

[49-2] Mata-atua Harbour. There is no river there except after heavy rain.

[49-3] He had a finger cut off in mourning for Finau Ulukalala, who must have died in 1790.

[50-1] La Pérouse and Kotzebue call it Pola.

[50-2] Upolu on which is Apia, the present capital of Samoa.

[50-3] Upolu is the native name, but it has been called Ojalava, Oahtooha, Ojatava, and Opoloo by different navigators, who may have taken the names of villages or districts to mean the whole island. The population exceeded 20,000 at the beginning of last century.

[50-4] Turmeric powder, never a mark of distinction, was besmeared over nursing mothers, chief women at the feasts connected with puberty, and persons concerned in certain other ceremonies.

[51-1] Bougainville sighted Upolu on May 5th, 1760. A thick fog which came on that afternoon, and lasted all the following day, prevented him from approaching it, and from seeing Savaii, which he would have seen on May 7th in clear weather. La Pérouse coasted along its southern shore on December 17th, 1789. Unfortunately, smarting from the massacre of de Langle and his boat's crew at Tutuila, he was in no mood for communicating with the natives, and he did not anchor.

[51-2] See [p. 12].

[52-1] Fatafehi is the hereditary title of one of the spiritual chiefs of Tonga. He had no executive authority, but his wealth, derived from his lands and the offerings to which he was entitled, gave him considerable influence. The complicated hierarchy of spiritual chiefs in Tonga was a continual puzzle to Cook. Fatafehi at this time was an ornamental personage, inferior in dignity to the Tui Tonga, and in power to Tukuaho, who wielded the authority of his father Mumui, the Tui Kanakubolu. The Toobou (Tubou) mentioned here was the deputy of the tyrant Tukuaho, who, eight years later, was to pay the penalty of his crimes in the Revolution of 1799. Hamilton mentions that the tradition of Tasman's visit in 1642 was still preserved.

[54-1] Among the people who boarded the ship from Tofoa Lieut. Hayward recognized some of those who attacked Bligh's boat four days after the mutiny, and murdered Quartermaster Norton, but solicitude for the crew of the tender, which might call there, prevented Edwards from punishing them as they deserved. No doubt, both at Tofoa and Namuka, the natives would have attempted to take the ship had they thought success possible as, we now know, they had planned to capture Cook's ships, and as they actually did capture the privateer Port-au-Prince in 1806 at Haapai. In 1808 William Mariner, one of the survivors of that ill-fated ship, who has left behind him the best account of a native race that exists probably in any language, was led by the strange native account of Norton's murder, to visit his grave. The natives asserted that Norton was killed by a carpenter for the sake of an axe which he was carrying; that his body was stripped and dragged some distance inland to a Malae where it lay exposed for three days before burial; and that the grass had never since grown upon the track of the body nor upon its resting-place on the Malae. Mariner found a bare track leading inland from the beach and terminating in a bare patch, lying transversely, about the length and breadth of a man. It did not appear to be a beaten path, nor were there people enough in the neighbourhood to make such a path. Probably it was an old track, long disused and forgotten, for by such natural causes is man's belief in the supernatural fed.

[55-1] The Vavau Group, called by the natives Haafuluhao, which then as now, owed spiritual allegiance to Tonga.

[55-2] Manua, the most Easterly of the Samoa Group, called Opoun by La Pérouse.

[55-3] Tutuila, discovered by Roggewein in 1721, visited by Bougainville 4th May, 1768, and by La Pérouse 10th December, 1787. On the day before his murder by the natives, Comte de Langle, La Pérouse's second in command, discovered Pangopango harbour while on a walk through the island, but neither Bougainville nor La Pérouse seems to have discerned the masked fissure in the cliff which forms its entrance. Edwards must have had a copy of Bougainville on board, but no record of La Pérouse's visit four years before, or he would have shown greater caution in communicating with the natives. That he had heard something of La Pérouse's voyage, and had some ground for suspicion is shown by Hamilton. A detailed account of de Langle's murder is to be found in "La Pérouse's Voyage," vol. ii.

[56-1] Vavau.

[57-1] He might have added "in the Pacific," for it is a magnificent land-locked harbour, a little narrow for sailing ships to beat out of in a southerly wind, but excellent for steamships.

[57-2] This was Finau Ulukalala, one of the most notable men in Tongan history. He had just succeeded his elder brother, the Finau (Feenow) of Captain Cook's visit in 1777. On April 21st, 1799, he conspired against Tukuaho, the temporal sovereign of Tonga and assassinated him, plunging Tonga into a civil anarchy which lasted twenty years. He was Mariner's patron and protector until his death in 1809. "The great master of Greek drama," says a writer in the "Quarterly Review," "could have desired no better elements than are to be found in the history of this remarkable man; his remorseless ambition and his natural affections—his contempt for the fables and ceremonies of his country when in prosperity—his patient submission to them when in distress—his strong intellects—his evil deeds—and the death which was believed to be inflicted on him in vengeance by the over-ruling divinities whom he defied."

[58-1] Hunga.

[58-2] Niuababu.

[58-3] Falevai.

[58-4] Fonua Lei (Land of Whales' teeth).

[58-5] Laté.

[58-6] Toku.

[58-7] These islands had already been twice visited and named, and Cook, though he did not visit them, gives all their native names in his list of the islands composing the Friendly or Tonga Group. The honour of their discovery belongs to the Spanish pilot Maurelle, who sailed from Manila in 1781, without proper charts or instruments and almost without provisions for his long voyage to America. Reduced to desperate straits by famine, he sighted Fonua Lei, the northernmost of the Tonga Group, which he called Margoura, believing it to be one of the Solomon Islands. At Vavau he was liberally entertained by Bau or Poulaho, the Tui Tonga of Cook's visit four years before. La Pérouse passed close to the islands in December, 1787, but, consistent with his determination to hold no further intercourse with natives after the murder of M. de Langle, did not enter the harbour of Neiafu. Edwards had no account of either of these voyages. La Pérouse's journals were not published until 1797.

Fonua Lei was again destroyed by an eruption in 1846. The inhabitants who had plantations on it were removed to Vavau just in time.

[59-1] There is only one. It was so named by Tasman 1642. Maurelle called it Sola. But Edwards probably mistook the twin islets of Hunga Tonga and Hunga Haapai for Pylstaart.

[62-1] Niua-fo'ou (New Niua), discovered by W. Cornelis Schouten in the Dutch ship Eendracht (Unity) on May 14th, 1616, and named by him "Good Hope" Island. Twelve canoes came off, and some of them attempted to take the boat that he had sent ashore for water, but desisted on discharge of a volley which killed two men. He wrote: "The island was full of black cliffs, green on the top, and black, and was full of coco-trees and black earth. There was a large village, and several other houses on the seashore: the land was undulating, but not very high." No ship is known to have visited the island from 1614 to this visit in 1791.

The cocoanuts grown here are the largest in the world, but the specimens planted in other islands do not appear to maintain their abnormal size. The island is further remarkable from the fact that the Megapodius, or Scrub hen, is plentiful there, and nowhere else in the Pacific further east than the New Hebrides. The natives have no traditions of its introduction. The eggs have been prized as a delicacy in Tonga for centuries, and are exported thither by every canoe going southward during the breeding season. It is said that they are sometimes hatched artificially, but the young malao does not take kindly to the bush in Tonga, although the vegetation is much the same. Why should the bird be found in Polynesia, having skipped all the intermediate islands of Melanesia? To what story of the migration of races is it the only clue?

[63-1] Niuatobutabu, like Niuafoou, subject to the King of Tonga.

[63-2] Uea, discovered by Wallis in 1767, and visited by Maurelle on April 22nd, 1781. It has 3000 inhabitants who are said by the French missionaries to be increasing. Uea is nominally independent under its own queen, but the French priests wield the real power in so spirited a fashion that the natives frequently attempt to escape from the island as stowaways.

[64-1] Mourning for the death of a chief or near relation.

[65-1] This confirms the story of Kau Moala, a Tongan navigator, who returned to his native land in 1807 and related his adventures to Mariner. He had visited Futuna, Rotuma and Fiji in a double canoe, and, in describing Rotuma, he related the legend of two giants who had migrated from Tonga to Rotuma in legendary times. He was shown gigantic bones in proof of the story, the bones, no doubt, of some marine monster. Mention is made of Rotuma in a Tongan saga of the early sixteenth century, and there can be no doubt that there was occasional intercourse between these distant islands during the period when the Tongans were the Norsemen of the Pacific.

Voyage of H.M.S. 'Pandora'

VOYAGE OF H.M.S. 'PANDORA'

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

INTRODUCTION

FOOTNOTES:

CAPTAIN EDWARDS' REPORTS.

FOOTNOTES:

Voyage of H.M.S. 'Pandora'

VOYAGE OF H.M.S. 'PANDORA'

VOYAGE OF

H.M.S. 'PANDORA'

DESPATCHED TO ARREST THE MUTINEERS OFTHE '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

INTRODUCTION

FOOTNOTES:

CAPTAIN EDWARDS' REPORTS.

FOOTNOTES:

DESPATCHED TO ARREST THE MUTINEERS OF
THE 'BOUNTY' IN THE SOUTH SEAS, 1790-91