open boat voyage that is unexampled in
maritime history. The boat was only 23 feet long; the weight of eighteen
men sank her almost to the gunwale; the ocean before them was unknown,
and teeming with hidden dangers; their only arms against hostile natives
were a few cutlasses, their only food two ounces of biscuit each a day;
and yet they ran 3618 nautical miles in forty-one days, and reached Timor
with the loss of only one man, and he was killed by the natives at the
very outset.

The mutineers fared as mutineers have always fared. Having sailed the
ship to Tahiti, they fell out among themselves, half taking the _Bounty_
to the uninhabited island of Pitcairn, where they were discovered
twenty-seven years later, and half remaining at Tahiti. Of these two were
murdered, four were drowned in the wreck of the _Pandora_, three were
hanged in England, and six were pardoned, one living to become a
post-captain in the navy, another to be gunner on the _Blenheim_ when she
foundered with Sir Thomas Troubridge.

One boat voyage only is recorded as being longer than Bligh's. In 1536
Diego Botelho Pereira made the passage from Portuguese India to Lisbon in
a native _fusta_, or lateen rigged boat, but a little larger than
Bligh's. He had, however, covered her with a deck, and provisioned her
for the venture, and he was able to replenish his stock at various points
on the voyage.

In 1790 the publication of Bligh's account of his sufferings excited the
strongest public sympathy, and the Admiralty lost no time in fitting out
an expedition to search for the mutineers, and bring them home to
punishment. The _Pandora_, frigate, of 24 guns, was commissioned for the
purpose, and manned by 160 men, composed largely of landsmen, for every
trained seaman in the navy had gone to man the great fleet then
assembling at Portsmouth under Lord Howe. Captain Edward Edwards, the
officer chosen for the command, had a high reputation as a seaman and a
disciplinarian, and from the point of view of the Admiralty, who intended
the cruise simply as a police mission without any scientific object, no
better choice could have been made. Their orders to him were to proceed
to Tahiti, and, not finding the mutineers there, to visit the different
groups of the Society and Friendly Islands, and the others in the
neighbouring parts of the Pacific, using his best endeavours to seize and
bring home in confinement the whole, or such part of the delinquents as
he m