HMS Pandora (1779)

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HMS Pandora was a 24-gun frigate of the Royal Navy, built by Adams and Barnard at Deptford, and launched on 17 May 1779. She was deployed in North American waters during the American Revolutionary War but was 'in ordinary' (mothballed) from 1783.

After the news of the mutiny on the Bounty reached England on 1790-03-15, the Admiralty dispatched Pandora to the South Pacific to capture the mutineers and bring them to justice. Captain Edward Edwards took command on 6 August 1790 and sailed from England on 7 November 1790.

The Pandora reached Tahiti on 1791-03-23. Five of the men from the Bounty came on board voluntarily within 24 hours of the Pandora's arrival, and nine more were arrested in a few weeks by armed parties sent ashore to round them up. These fourteen men were imprisoned in a makeshift prison cell on the Pandora's quarter-deck, which they ironically called Pandora's Box. On 1791-05-08, the Pandora left Tahiti, and spent about three months visiting islands to the west of Tahiti in search of Bounty and the remaining mutineers, without finding any traces of the pirated vessel except flotsam — some spars and a yard.

Heading west, making for the Torres Strait, the Pandora ran aground 1791-08-29 on the Great Barrier Reef. She sank the next day claiming the lives 31 of the crew and four of the prisoners. The remaining 89 of the ship's company and ten prisoners, released from their cell at the last minute, assembled in four small boats and sailed for Timor, arriving there on 1791-09-16.

The wreck was discovered in 1977 and was immediately declared a protected site under the Australian Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976. The Queensland Museum has been excavating the wreck and the Museum of Tropical Queensland is piecing together the Pandora puzzle using the archaeological evidence from the wreck as well as the extant historical evidence.

Descendants of the 9 mutineers who 'got away' (from the Pandora) still live on Pitcairn Island, the refuge Fletcher Christian found and where the Bounty was burned and scuttled. Their hiding place was not discovered until 1808 when the sealer Topaz (Capt Mayhew Folger) happened on the tiny uncharted island. By that time all the mutineers -except John Adams (aka Alexander Smith)- were dead, most having died under violent circumstances.

A fictitious British warship of this name is the setting of the William Golding trilogy To the Ends of the Earth.