HMS Pandora was a 24-gun Porcupine-class sixth-rate post ship of the Royal Navy launched in May 1779. The vessel is best known for its role in hunting down the Bounty mutineers in 1790, which remains one of the best-known stories in the history of seafaring. Pandora was partially successful by capturing 14 of the mutineers, but wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef on the return voyage in 1791. HMS Pandora is considered to be one of the most significant shipwrecks in the Southern Hemisphere.
Ducie Island is an uninhabited atoll in the Pitcairn Islands group, which also includes Pitcairn, Henderson and Oeno islands. Ducie lies east of Pitcairn Island, and east of Henderson Island, and has a total area of 1.5 square miles (3.9 km2), which includes the lagoon. It is 1.5 miles (2.4 km) long, measured northeast to southwest, and about 1 mile (1.6 km) wide. The island is composed of four islets: Acadia, Pandora, Westward and Edwards.
Captain Peter Heywood was a British Royal Navy officer who was on board HMS Bounty during the mutiny of 28 April 1789. He was later captured in Tahiti, tried and condemned to death as a mutineer, but subsequently pardoned. He resumed his naval career and eventually retired with the rank of post-captain, after 29 years of honourable service.
Admiral Edward Edwards was a British naval officer best known as the captain of HMS Pandora, the frigate which the Admiralty sent to the South Pacific in pursuit of the Bounty mutineers.
Admiral Sir Philip Charles Henderson Calderwood Durham, GCB was a Royal Navy officer whose service in the American War of Independence, French Revolutionary War and Napoleonic Wars was lengthy, distinguished and at times controversial.
Vice-Admiral Keith Stewart was a Scottish Royal Navy officer and politician who sat in the House of Commons on two occasions. Having begun his naval career in around 1753, Stewart was promoted to commander in 1761 and then advanced to post-captain in 1762 because of political negotiations undergone by his father Alexander Stewart, 6th Earl of Galloway. Stewart commanded HMS Berwick at the Battle of Ushant in 1778 and in 1781 was appointed Commander-in-Chief, North Sea only to be superseded by Hyde Parker soon afterwards. As such he served at the Battle of Dogger Bank as a volunteer on Berwick.
Richard Edwards was an officer of the Royal Navy who served for a brief time as Commodore Governor of Newfoundland.
The Philomel-class gunvesselHMS Newport was launched in Wales in 1867. Having become the first ship to pass through the Suez Canal, she was sold in 1881 and renamed Pandora II. She was purchased again in about 1890 and renamed Blencathra, taking part in expeditions to the north coast of Russia. She was bought in 1912 by Georgy Brusilov for use in his ill-fated 1912 Arctic expedition to explore the Northern Sea Route, and was named Svyataya Anna, after Saint Anne. The ship became firmly trapped in ice; only two members of the expedition, Valerian Albanov and Alexander Konrad, survived. The ship has never been found.
HMS Bounty, also known as HM Armed Vessel Bounty, was a British merchant ship that the Royal Navy purchased in 1787 for a botanical mission. The ship was sent to the South Pacific Ocean under the command of William Bligh to acquire breadfruit plants and transport them to the British West Indies to provide a cheap food source for the West Indies' large enslaved population. That mission was never completed owing to a 1789 mutiny led by acting lieutenant Fletcher Christian, an incident now popularly known as the Mutiny on the Bounty. The mutineers later burned Bounty while she was moored at Pitcairn Island in the Southern Pacific Ocean in 1790. An American adventurer helped land several remains of Bounty in 1957.
The Honourable Sir Henry Duncan KCH, CB was a prominent Royal Navy officer of the early nineteenth century. The second surviving son of the highly regarded Admiral Adam Duncan, 1st Viscount Duncan, who defeated the Dutch Navy at the Battle of Camperdown in 1797, Duncan achieved a successful career in his own right, operating with great success against French and Italian shipping and shore fortifications in the Mediterranean during the Napoleonic Wars. For his services he was knighted and given numerous honours before dying at the young age of 49 from a sudden apoplexy in 1835.
Admiral Sir George Elliot was a Royal Navy officer who served during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and the First Opium War.
HMS Herald was an Atholl-class 28-gun sixth-rate corvette of the Royal Navy. She was launched in 1822 as HMS Termagant, commissioned in 1824 as HMS Herald and converted to a survey ship in 1845. After serving as a chapel ship from 1861, she was sold for breaking in 1862.
Sir Courtenay Boyle, KCH was an officer of the Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary Wars. In 1807 he served as a Member of Parliament for Bandon.
HMS Pandora was a 3-gun brig of the Royal Navy, in service from 1833 to 1862.
The complement of HMS Bounty, the Royal Navy ship on which a historic mutiny occurred in the south Pacific on 28 April 1789, comprised 46 men on its departure from England in December 1787 and 44 at the time of the mutiny, including her commander Lieutenant William Bligh. All but two of those aboard were Royal Navy personnel; the exceptions were two civilian botanists engaged to supervise the breadfruit plants Bounty was tasked to take from Tahiti to the West Indies. Of the 44 aboard at the time of the mutiny, 19 were set adrift in the ship's launch, while 25, a mixture of mutineers and detainees, remained on board under Fletcher Christian. Bligh led his loyalists 3,500 nautical miles to safety in the open boat, and ultimately back to England. The mutineers divided—most settled on Tahiti, where they were captured by HMS Pandora in 1791 and returned to England for trial, while Christian and eight others evaded discovery on Pitcairn Island.
The defense of the cutter Eagle was a battle on and around Long Island New York, that took place from October 10 to 13, 1814, between the British Royal Navy and the United States' Revenue Marine. Early on in the engagement, the United States' only involved vessel, USRC Eagle, was beached near Negro Head. Despite the loss of their ship, her crew continued fighting the Royal Navy vessels from shore using cannon recovered from their wrecked vessel. Eagle's crew was ultimately able to repair and refloat her, but unsuccessful in their attempts to drive the British ships away. Once more she was beached, but after exhausting their ammunition over three days of fighting, the Eagle's crew was unable to prevent her from being towed off by the Royal Navy, which then sailed her back past the shoreline for a victory lap. Though there were no fatalities on either side in the battle, a cow grazing in the area died after being hit by a 32-pound (15 kg) round shot fired by one of the Royal Navy ships.
HMS Narcissus was the lead ship of the Royal Navy Narcissus-class 32-gun fifth-rate frigate, launched in 1801. She participated in the War of 1812.
John Macpherson Ferguson (1783–1855) was a Scot serving in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, mainly in command of HMS Mersey, who rose to the rank of Rear Admiral.
Admiral Kenelm Somerville, 17th Lord Somerville was a Royal Navy officer and Scottish hereditary peer. He joined the navy in 1801 and served throughout the Napoleonic Wars, fighting at the invasion of Isle de France, Battle of Tamatave, and invasion of Java. He was promoted to commander in 1811 and in 1813 took command of the troopship HMS Thames which he sailed to North America to fight in the War of 1812. Promoted to post-captain in 1814, he commanded a flotilla in the expedition that burned Washington. Somerville retired from the navy in 1846 and continued to be promoted on the retired list, becoming an admiral in 1862. He inherited the title of Lord Somerville from his brother in 1842 and died at Newbold Comyn in 1864 at the age of 76.
The Narcissus-class frigate was a 32-gun, 18-pounder fifth-rate frigate class of five ships of the Royal Navy. Designed by Surveyor of the Navy Sir John Henslow, the class was created to make use of shipyards that could not construct larger frigates. They were similar in design to the preceding 32-gun frigate class, the Amphion class, but were slightly shorter. Two ships were initially constructed, with a later batch of three being ordered in response to an Admiralty request for the resumption of production of proven frigate designs. The final two ships of the class were cancelled when the shipyard they were being constructed at went bankrupt. Unlike her sister ships, the name ship of the class Narcissus was armed with experimental short 24 pounders rather than 18 pounders.
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