Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora. Captain R. N. Edward Edwards
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