Edward Edwards

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Edward Edwards (* 1741 ; † April 13, 1815 in Water Newton ) was a British naval officer and explorer. He was sent out by the Admiralty to capture the mutineers of the Bounty . He circled the world once and discovered several islands in the South Pacific for Europe.

Early years

Edward Edwards was born in 1741, the third son of Richard and Mary Edwards. The exact dates of his birth are not known, he was baptized on September 1, 1741 in Water Newton, Cambridgeshire , England.

Little is known about his early years. He was made lieutenant in the Royal Navy on September 7, 1759, and on April 25, 1781, captain. He commanded the frigate HMS Narcissus , on which a mutiny occurred in 1782, which Edwards successfully put down, six of the mutineers were later hanged.

Capture of the Bounty mutineers

After the heroically celebrated return of Captain William Bligh after the mutiny on the Bounty (for the previous events see → Wikipedia Bounty ), it was initially assumed that two Spanish ships had raised the bounty in the South Pacific. However, the news turned out to be false, so that the British Admiralty felt compelled to equip an expedition to arrest the mutineers. The frigate HMS Pandora was equipped , placed under the command of Edward Edwards and sent on November 7, 1790 from Southampton via Cape Horn to the Pacific. On March 4, 1791 happened Pandora the Easter Island and on March 16, 1791 sighted Edwards an unlisted on his card island he Ducie baptized. He believed himself to be the first to discover it, but today it is believed that Ducie is identical to the island of "La Encarnación" discovered on January 26, 1606 by the Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernández de Quirós .

Edwards now chose a northwest course to the Tuamotu Archipelago and missed Pitcairn Island , only 300 km from Ducie , to which Fletcher Christian had fled with the Bounty mutineers.

On March 16, 1791 Edwards passed the island of Marutea Sud , which he called "Lord Hood", after the Admiral Samuel Hood . Two days later he discovered the island of Tureia , still unknown in Europe , which he named "Carysfort", and then sailed via Mehetia to the island of Tahiti . On March 23, 1791, the Pandora anchored in Matavai Bay. Edwards set off on the hunt for the mutineers of the Bounty with the help of the local chiefs that same day . Of the sixteen mutineers who remained in Tahiti, two had been murdered, ten arrested, and four turned themselves in. Some of them had just built a fast schooner in Tahiti with which they wanted to flee to America. Edwards seized the ship, which he called the Matavi Tender , fitted it out and placed it under the command of midshipman David Renouard. For the captured mutineers, he had a cage built on the deck of the Pandora , called "Pandora's Box" by the crew, based on Pandora's box .

Find the Bounty

Now Edwards went to look for the bounty with the remaining mutineers, which he suspected to be on one of the islands in the western Pacific. On May 9, 1791, the Pandora and the schooner sailed via Tahaa and Bora Bora to the northern Cook Islands Aitutaki and Palmerston and on to the Tokelau Island Atafu . At the Palmerston Islands a dinghy manned by a midshipman and several crew members was driven out into the open sea, the men were never seen again.

On June 12, 1791 Edwards discovered the Nukunonu Atoll , which he named "Duke of Clarence's Island". In the Samoa Archipelago , the two ships were separated and the Pandora called at Rotuma , another first discovery that Edwards named "Grenville Island".

Via Savaiʻi and Upolu we went to the Haʻapai Islands belonging to Tonga , to which Edwards named "The Happy Islands". Two other new discoveries were the islands of “Miter” ( Fatutaka ) and “Cherry” ( Anuta ) west of the Santa Cruz Islands . There was no trace of the bounty on any of these islands .

Average and return

The wrecked Pandora

After the Pandora passed the Santa Cruz Islands without landing there, Edwards had the Endeavor Strait headed for, the strait between Australia and Papua New Guinea , to return to England. On the evening of August 29, 1791, the Pandora ran onto a coral rock on the Great Barrier Reef and took water so quickly that the team with the pumps could do little. Edwards therefore had the boats deployed. The bounty mutineers Coleman, Mc Intosh and Norman, whom Captain Bligh had called innocent, were released from their prison, the rest of them remained shackled in Pandora's box.

Towards morning the ship had sunk so far that the upper deck was only partially above water. Ten prisoners, contrary to Edwards' orders, were freed from the Pandora crew at the last minute. Skinner, Sumner, Stewart, and Hillbrant drowned.

Of the ship's crew, 31 sailors drowned and 89, including Captain Edwards, rescued. With the Pandora's four open dinghies , they crossed the barrier reef and reached the uninhabited York Peninsula . Then they made their way to the Dutch colony of Timor , where they arrived on September 16, 1791 after an adventurous journey of over 1,000 miles. As passengers on the Dutch ship Rembang of the East India Company , Captain Edwards, the healthy crew members, the ten surviving Bounty mutineers and nine escaped convicts from the convict colony of Australia , including William Bryant with his wife Mary Bryant and their two young children, traveled as far as Batavia . The convicts had landed in a small, open boat after a 5200 kilometer, 69-day sea voyage in Timor and had pretended to be shipwrecked in vain. Edwards took her into custody. When the British arrived in Cape Town, they were taken over by the warship HMS Gorgon and brought back to England. The surviving Bounty mutineers were tried in London, the escaped convicts had to serve the remainder of their sentences in Newgate Prison .

Edwards had circled the earth once, though not in the same ship. Because of the loss of the Pandora , a court martial against Edwards took place on September 10, 1792 on the HMS Hector in Portsmouth . The negotiator was Lord Hood. Edwards and the Pandora officers were honorable acquitted.

Further career

Nothing is known about another command. Edwards, however, was for the February 14, 1799 Rear Admiral of the Blue appointed (Vice Admiral) and on 31 July 1810 Admiral of the White , ( Admiral ) the then third-highest rank in the Royal Navy.

Edward Edwards died unmarried on April 13, 1815. His grave is still today in St. Remigius Churchyard in Water Newton, Cambridgeshire, England.

literature

  • Edward Edwards: Voyage of HMS Pandora: Despatched to arrest the Mutineers of the Bounty. Salzwasser Verlag, Paderborn 2009.
  • George Hamilton: Voyage Round the World in His Majesty's Frigate Pandora. London 1793. Facsimile : Hordern House Rare Books, Sydney (Australia) 2009, ISBN 978-1-875567-22-5 (report of the Pandora ship's doctor).

Remarks

  1. Charles Churchill was murdered by Matthew Thompson, whereupon the Tahitians killed and sacrificed Thompson.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Edwards Family History. In: Archerfamily.org, accessed August 31, 2016
  2. Leonard F. Guttridge: Mutiny - A History of Naval Insurrection. US Naval Institute Press 1992, p. 40
  3. Caroline Alexander: The Bounty. Berlin 2003, p. 19
  4. ^ David Thomas Renouard, Midshipman, HMS Pandora: Voyage of the Matavy Tender. ( Memento from January 23, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
  5. John Marshall: Royal naval biography or memoirs of the services of all the flag-officers, superannuated rear-admirals, retired-captains, post-captains, and commanders, whose names appeared on the Admiralty list of sea officers at the commencement of the year 1823, Vol. II. Part II, pp. 747–785, London 1823–1835
  6. ^ John Dunmore: Who´s Who in Pacific Navigation , Honolulu 1991
  7. Tim Causer (Ed.): Memorandoms of James Martin. UCL Press , London 2017.
  8. ^ Gentleman Magazine. Volume 69, June 1799, p. 537
  9. ^ Navy List, Dec. 1814. Ed. By John Murray, London, p. 2