Part of the renowned Anatomy of the Ship series, this volume explores the Frigate Pandora, best known for her voyage to Tahiti to bring back the Bounty Mutineers.

HMS Pandora was a 24-gun Porcupine class frigate of the Royal Navy, built by Adams and Barnard at Deptford, England and launched on 17 May 1779. She was deployed in North American waters during the American Revolutionary War but was put 'in ordinary' (mothballed) after 1783. She was best known as the ship sent in 1790 to search for the Bounty and the mutineers who had taken her. She was wrecked on the return voyage in 1791. Captain Edwards and his officers were exonerated for the loss of the Pandora after a court martial. No attempt was made by the colonial authorities in New South Wales to salvage material from the wreck.

Based on the latest research in original sources, this is an in-depth text covering the complete history of the 50-gun ship. Numerous tables of technical data covering dimensions, construction, armament and details are included.

Has history been wrong for 200 years? Read the startling truth about the mutiny on the Bounty, its characters, causes, and aftermath. Television rights are now in development with Ridley Scott's Scott Free Productions. More than two centuries after Master’s Mate Fletcher Christian led a mutiny against Lieutenant William Bligh on a small, armed transport vessel called Bounty, the true story of this enthralling adventure has become obscured by the legend. Combining vivid characterization and deft storytelling, Caroline Alexander shatters the centuries-old myths surrounding this story. She brilliantly shows how, in a desperate attempt to save one man from the gallows and another from ignominy, two powerful families came together and began to create the version of history we know today. The true story of the mutiny on the Bounty is an epic of duty and heroism, pride and power, and the assassination of a brave man’s honor at the dawn of the Romantic age.

Popular films about the Bounty mutiny only scratch the surface. This rebellion on a British vessel in 1789 sparked the voyages of H.M.S. Pandora--dispatched to track down the mutineers and return them to England for court-martial--and the Matavy, a schooner built by the mutineers in Tahiti. This is the first book to include eyewitness accounts from five men who endured these voyages. Presented in overlapping, chronological order are the first publication of a narrative by a member of Matavy's crew, who vividly describes a desperate struggle to survive with meager provisions among islands filled with hostile natives. A previously unpublished poem by an anonymous sailor on Pandora recounts the ship's sinking, the survivors' tortuous journey to the Dutch East Indies, and their return to England. The captain's unedited statement on the loss of Pandora is included and appendices summarize the Bounty and Pandora courts-martial and the later history of each narrator.

Subject areas discussed in this book include shipwrecks and abandoned vessels, underwater site formation processes, maritime infrastructure and industries such as whaling, submerged aircraft and Australian Indigenous sites underwater. The application of National and State legislation and management regimes to these underwater cultural heritage sites is also highlighted. The contributors of this piece have set the standard for the practice in Australia from which others can learn.