Qualla: HMS Pandora (1779)

HMS Pandora (1779): Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Etching by Robert Batty (1789–1848), from an original sketch by Peter Heywood (1772–1831), Public domain. There was a cage on the quarterdeck, and the men inside it called it Pandora's Box. Eleven feet by eighteen, iron-barred, baking under the tropical sun, it held fourteen prisoners taken from Tahiti - the men the Royal Navy had sailed halfway round the world to recover after the most famous mutiny in the history of the sea. Below them, the warship HMS Pandora was running west toward home through uncharted reef. On the night of 29 August 1791, on the outer edge of what we now call the Great Barrier Reef, she ran onto coral and began to die. Some of those men in the box would never get out.

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Image: Etching by Robert Batty (1789–1848), from an original sketch by Peter Heywood (1772–1831) | Public domain

HMS Pandora (1779): The Hunt for the Bounty

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Etching by Robert Batty (1789–1848), from a sketch by the late Mr. Peter Heywood., Public domain. Pandora was a 24-gun frigate, launched at Deptford in 1779, already a veteran of the American war when the Admiralty gave her a new and singular purpose. Word had reached London of the mutiny aboard HMS Bounty - of how Fletcher Christian had set Lieutenant William Bligh adrift in...

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Image: Etching by Robert Batty (1789–1848), from a sketch by the late Mr. Peter Heywood. | Public domain

HMS Pandora (1779): The Men in the Box

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rolling Bone, Public domain. Edwards has come down through history as a hard man, and the box he built tells you why. Guilty or innocent, surrendered or captured, the fourteen were locked together in irons in a cramped wooden roundhouse on the open deck. They ate, slept, and relieved themselves where they sa...

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Image: Rolling Bone | Public domain

HMS Pandora (1779): The Reef in the Dark

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Etching by Robert Batty (1789–1848), from an original sketch by Peter Heywood (1772–1831), Public domain. Heading for the Torres Strait, Pandora struck the reef as night fell. Water poured in faster than the pumps could fight it. Through the long hours of darkness the prisoners begged to be let out of their irons while the ship settled beneath them. As dawn came and Pandora finally w...

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Image: Etching by Robert Batty (1789–1848), from an original sketch by Peter Heywood (1772–1831) | Public domain

HMS Pandora (1779): What the Sea Kept

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Etching by Robert Batty (1789–1848), from an original sketch by Peter Heywood (1772–1831), Public domain. The eighty-nine surviving crew and ten surviving prisoners crawled onto a small treeless sand cay, then crossed the Arafura Sea to Timor in four open boats - an ordeal that echoed Bligh's own famous voyage. Sixteen more died before reaching home; of the 134 who had left England, ...

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Image: Etching by Robert Batty (1789–1848), from an original sketch by Peter Heywood (1772–1831) | Public domain