Edward Edwards (Royal Navy officer)
Admiral Edward Edwards (1742–1815) 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. Biography. Early years. The fifth of six children, Edward Edwards was born in Water Newton, a village near Peterborough, to Richard Edwards of Water Newton and Mary Fuller of Caldicot. He was born in 1742 and christened in St Remegius' Church, Water Newton. He never married. On 7 September 1759, age 17, he was commissioned as a lieutenant. To qualify for this  commission he would have been required, in addition to passing a lieutenant's exam, to produce evidence of at least six years of sea time. No documents have been located to date which would establish exactly when, and under whose patronage, he started his naval career. It is likely he first went to sea as a captain's servant when about 10 years old and subsequently completed at least part of the required sea time as a midshipman. A signature, 'Edwd Edwards', inscribed on a document witnessing the Will of one Isaac Bishopbridge serving "on Board His Majestys Ship of  Warr the "Devonshire"," suggests that Edwards may have sailed under Captain John Moore on HMS "Devonshire" in April 1756. His naval career after he was commissioned included service in the following ships, before being appointed to "Pandora": Section::::"Pandora" and the "Bounty". He spent the following six years on half-pay after the end of the American Revolutionary war; until 6 August 1790, when he was appointed to take command of the frigate "Pandora". He received new orders on 11 August to prepare his new command for a journey to "remote parts", on a mission in pursuit of the "Bounty" mutineers . With the help of former "Bounty" midshipman Thomas Hayward - a Bligh loyalist recently returned to England from the South Pacific - Edwards succeeded in finding fourteen men (Bligh had stated that four of these were loyal but could not be accommodated on the over-full launch with the other loyal men; so Edwards found ten mutineers),The ship finally sailed on 8 May, to search for Christian and "Bounty" among the thousands of southern Pacific islands. At Tubai a Bounty Anchor was recovered by . Apart from a few spars discovered at Palmerston Island, no traces of the fugitive vessel were found. Edwards  continued the search until August, when he turned west and headed for the Dutch East Indies. Ironically, a set of islands the Pandora sailed to but did not land at were the Pitcairn Islands; had he checked his charts and found that this uncharted island was at the correct latitude but wrong longitude for Pitcairn Island, he could very well had fulfilled his mission of taking into custody the last nine Bounty mutineers. The "Pandora" foundered on the Great Barrier Reef on 29 August 1791 during the journey home from the South Pacific. Four of the ten mutineers and 31  of "Pandora"s crew died in the destruction of the ship. After an arduous open boat voyage from the wreck to Timor and on to Batavia (Jakarta), only 78 men of "Pandora"s original 134-strong crew eventually reached England, accompanied by six mutineers and four loyalists. For Hayward this was the second time in as many years that had he found himself in an open boat making for a safe haven in the Dutch East Indies. Edwards was court-martialed on 17 September 1792 for the loss of the "Pandora". Immediately prior to the proceedings, he submitted to the Admiralty his  account of the events leading up to the sinking. All of his officers supported Edwards' contention that the frigate had been lost due to circumstances beyond anyone's control. The court-martial was attended by William Dillon, then a midshipman, who later became a vice-admiral in the Royal Navy and described Edwards in his memoirs as a "fine, venerable-looking officer. His appearance completely absorbed all my attention during the trial, and I felt an inward satisfaction at the result, after all the hardships and dangers he had overcome". Captain Edwards and his officers were exonerated. Edwards subsequently served  for a few years as a 'regulating' captain (recruiting officer) in Argyll and Hull and then resigned himself to inactivity on the half pay list. However, he was promoted to vice-admiral in 1809 and eventually ended his career as Admiral of the White, titularly the third most senior officer in the Royal Navy. He died in his native place - Stamford, Lincolnshire - aged 73, in 1815. Edwards was buried in St Remigius Church in Water Newton, a village in Huntingdonshire. His reputation and character were effectively blackened by members of the Heywood family, who were unable to forgive him for  what they perceived as excessively harsh treatment of their son, "Bounty" midshipman Peter Heywood, who was tried and convicted as a mutineer and pardoned. Yet Edwards had staunch supporters among other officers who had served under his command and he was also remembered by his niece as a "sweet old man", often out on a walk in the country lanes around his native Water Newton and Uppingham where he owned several farms. According to an obituary in the "Lincoln, Stamford & Rutland Mercury" (21 April 1815), he suffered for the rest of his life from the effects of the hardships he  endured during the open boat voyage to Timor after the loss of the "Pandora". This could be the reason the Admiralty never appointed him to a seagoing command after his court-martial in 1792. Legacy. Notwithstanding his niece's fond memories, Edwards' conduct on the "Pandora" has been regarded in some circles as every bit as cruel as popular opinion claims that William Bligh was on the "Bounty". Edwards, as ordered, kept his captives in close confinement, as if they had already been convicted, in spite of the fact that four of them had been identified by Bligh as being  innocent and were subsequently acquitted at the court martial in Portsmouth. Edwards was accused of being excessively callous when it came to the captives' well-being - for instance by refusing to let them use an old sail to prevent them from being sunburned on a sand cay, and also by collectively referring to, and treating them all as mutineers and pirates. Indeed, one of his officers, Lieutenant John Larkan (1746–1830), is alleged to have been "brutal" to the prisoners, which Edwards allegedly condoned. One of Edwards' main detractors was Commodore Sir Thomas Pasley, uncle of convicted mutineer Peter Heywood, whose  measured tone in one of his letters to Heywood leaves no doubt about his disapproval of 'that fellow' Edwards; he was especially critical of the prisoners' confinement in 'Pandora's Box'. Pasley omits to mention how he would have handled the situation had command been his. Presumably he might have occasionally let the prisoners out of their captivity location; thus, midshipmen Stewart and Heywood might have been allowed to spend some time walking the quarterdeck, as Peter Heywood was permitted to do after his transhipment to HMS "Gorgon" in Cape Town during the last stage of his voyage home. Much  was made of this by Heywood's friends and defenders during his court martial, as if to underscore their plea that Edwards' conduct towards the prisoners had been excessively harsh and that Heywood had already suffered disproportionately and therefore had, in fact, already been punished. Most damningly, Edwards is often accused of excessive callousness towards the prisoners by keeping all of them locked up in the prison cell after the frigate had run aground. Moreover, besides the fact that three prisoners were immediately ordered out of the cell to help the crew man the pumps; while several hours later, after  the decision had been made to abandon ship because she could not be saved, it is not certain that Edwards gave orders to release the remaining eleven prisoners. Some saved themselves only because Joseph Hodges, the armourer's mate, knocked off the prisoners irons, but he was not able to complete the job because the ship sank very quickly while at the last minuite the Shuttle closing the cell had been taken off by one of the crewmen as the ship was foundering; nevertheless 4 prisoners were drowned. Even though six of the captives were found guilty of mutiny, only  three of them – Millward, Burkitt and Ellison – were eventually executed; William Muspratt was acquitted on a legal technicality and the remaining two, Peter Heywood and James Morrison were subsequently pardoned by the King. Edwards' search for the mutiny ringleaders ultimately proved fruitless, but his voyages might have provided clues to the fate of one of the 18th century's greatest mysteries, the fate of the Lapérouse expedition. When passing Vanikoro, Santa Cruz Islands in the Pacific Ocean on 13 August 1791, smoke signals were observed rising from the island. However Edwards, who was only interested in prisoners, reasoned that mutineers  fearful of discovery would not be advertising their whereabouts, so he ignored the smoke and sailed on. Sven Wahlroos, in his 1989 book, "Mutiny and Romance in the South Seas", suggests that the smoke signals were almost certainly a distress message sent by survivors of the Lapérouse expedition, which later evidence indicated were still alive on Vanikoro at that time; three years after the "Boussole" and "Astrolabe" had foundered in 1788. An islet on Ducie Atoll, in the Pitcairn Islands, is named after him. The Bryant Escapees. On the 5th of June 1791 a small boat carrying Mary and William  Bryant, their two children Charlotte (aged three) and Emanuel (aged 19 months) and seven fellow escaped convicts arrived in Koepang Timor after a gruelling 69 day voyage from Sydney. When they arrived, they told the Dutch Governor Mynheer Wanjon, that they were the survivors from a whaler, the Neptune, that had been wrecked in Torres Strait. For a while they were believed but at some point the Dutch realised they were escaped convicts and they were imprisoned, but treated humanely. On the 16th of September Edwards arrived at Koepang with survivors of his crew and his captured mutineers in four  small boats. He questioned the fugitives who admitted their escape from Port Jackson, but he did not take them in charge until 5 October when he was ready to sail to Batavia on the Rembang. Once on board the prisoners were put in chains and given only enough food to prevent starvation. The captain had offered to provide a cabin for Mary and the children but Edwards refused the offer. When the Rembang arrived in Batavia in November some of the convicts, including William Bryant and Emanuel, were already suffering from fever and were moved ashore to the Dutch East  India Company Hospital where Emanuel died on the 1st of December followed by William three weeks later. In Batavia the crew were divided into four groups under lieutenants Larkan, Corner and Hayward, each travelling back to England via Holland on one of three VOC ships-Horssen, Zwaan and Hoornweg. Captain Edwards, several warrant officers, the escaped convicts and the 10 Bounty prisoners embarked with the fourth group on the Vredenburg for Capetown. On this voyage one escaped convict went overboard in Sunda Strait and two died at sea. At the Cape, Mary, her daughter Charlotte and the four surviving convicts  were handed over to Commander John Parker of HMS Gorgon. Mary’s daughter Charlotte died at sea during the voyage from Capetown to England on 5 May 1792. Later life. Edwards is said to have retired to Cornwall; according to a story linking him to the 'Pandora Inn' along Restronguet Creek near Mylor, which he is alleged to have owned and renamed after retiring from the Navy. However, there is no documentary evidence to support this claim. Rather, together with a story about a figurehead adorning the Inn's stairwell, said to be based on an 18th-century original from  the "Pandora"; this claim can be confidently refuted and relegated to the realm of creative copy-writing to advertise the inn, which according to cadastral records was called 'The Passage House' until 1851, following the death of Alexander Luben, tenant and Restronguet Passage boatman from 1823 until his death in 1848.