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.

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 the HMS Devonshire in April 1756.

His naval career after he was commissioned included service in the following ships, before being appointed to Pandora:

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), but 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.

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