relief in their distressed condition. Having remained here three weeks, they embarked on the 6th of October on board the Rembang Dutch Indiaman, and on the 30th anchored at Samarang, where they were agreeably surprised to find their little tender, which they had so long given up for lost. On the 7th November they arrived at Batavia, where Captain Edwards agreed with the Dutch East India Company, to divide the whole of the ship's company and prisoners among four of their ships proceeding to Europe. The latter the captain took with him in the Vreedenburgh; but finding his majesty's ship Gorgon at the Cape, he transhipped himself and prisoners, and proceeded in her to Spithead, where he arrived on the 19th June, 1792. Captain Edwards in his meager narrative takes no more notice of his prisoners with regard to the mode in which they were disposed of at Coupang and Batavia, than he does when the Pandora went down. In fact, he suppresses all information respecting them from the day in which they were consigned to "Pandora's Box." From this total indifference towards these unfortunate men and their almost unparalleled sufferings, Captain Edwards must be set down as a man whose only feeling was to stick to the letter of his instructions, and rigidly to adhere to what he considered the strict line of his duty; that he was a man of a cold phlegmatic disposition, whom no distress could inove, and whose feelings were not easily disturbed by the sufferings of his fellow-creatures. He appears to have been one of those mortals who might say with Manfred My spirit walk'd not with the souls of men; * * * * My joys, my griefs, my passions, and my powers There seems to have been a general feeling at and before the court-martial, that Captain Edwards had exercised a harsh, unnecessary, and undue degree of severity on his prisoners. It is the custom, sanctioned no doubt by long usage, to place in irons all such as may have been guilty of mutiny in a ship of war, and the necessity of so doing is obvious enough to prevent in the most effectual manner communication with the rest of the ship's company, who might be contaminated by their intercourse with such mischievous and designing men; men whose crime is of that die that, if found guilty, they have little hope to escape the punishment of death, to which a mutineer must by the naval articles of war be sentenced; no alternative being left to a courtmartial in such a case but to pronounce a sentence of acquittal or of death. In the present case, however, most of the prisoners had surrendered themselves; many of them had taken no active part in the mutiny; and others had been forcibly compelled to remain in the ship. It was not likely, therefore, that any danger could arise from indulging them occasionally and in turns with a few hours of fresh air on deck. As little danger was there of their escaping; where indeed could they escape to, especially when the ship was going down, at a great distance from any shore, and the nearest one known to be inhabited by savages? All or most of them were desirous of getting home, and throwing themselves on God and their country. The captain, however, had no "compunctious visitings of nature" to shake his purpose, which seems to have been to keep them strictly in irons during the whole passage, and to deliver them over in that state on his arrival in England. Perhaps the circumstance of the crime of piracy being superadded to that of mutiny, may have operated on his stern nature, and induced him to inflict a greater severity of punishment than he might otherwise have done, and which he certainly did far beyond the letter and spirit of his instructions. He might have considered, that in all ages and among all nations, with the exception of some of the Greek states,* piracy has been held in the utmost abhorrence, and those guilty of it treated with singular and barbarous severity; and that the most sanguinary laws were established for the protection of person and property in maritime adventure. The laws of Oleron, which were composed under the immediate direction of our Richard I., and became the common usage among maritime states whose vessels passed through British seas, are conceived in a spirit of the most barbarous cruelty. Thus, if a poor pilot through ignorance lost the vessel, he was either required to make full satisfaction to the merchant for damages sustained, or to lose his head. In the case of wrecks, where the lord of the coast (something like our present vice-admiral) should be found to be in league with the pilots, and run the ships on rocks in order to get salvage, the said lord, the salvers, and all concerned are declared to be accursed and excommunicated, and punished as thieves and robbers; and the pilot condemned to be hanged upon a high gibbet, which is to abide and remain to succeeding ages on the place where erected, as a visible caution to other ships sailing thereby. Nor was the fate of the lord of the coast less severe,-his property was to be confiscated, and himself fastened to a post in the midst of his own mansion, which, being fired at the four corners, were *The Phoceans, on account of the sterility of their country, were in the habit of practising piracy, which, according to Justin, was held to be an honourable profession. These laws are contained in an ancient authentic book, called "The Black Book of the Admiralty," in which all things therein comprehended are engrossed on vellum, in an ancient character; which has been from time to time kept in the registry of the High Court of Admiralty for the use of the judges. When Mr. Luders made inquiry at the office in Doctors' Commons, in 1808, he was informed by the proper officers there that they had never seen such book, and knew nothing of it, nor where to find it. The fact is, the book in question was put into Lord Thurlow's hands when attorney-general, and never returned. There is a copy of it in the Admiralty all to be burned together; the walls thereof demolished, and the spot on which it stood be converted into a market-place for the sale only of hogs and swine, to all posterity. These and many other barbarous usages were transferred into the institutions of Wisbuy, which formed the jus mercatorum for a long period, and in which great care was taken for the security of ships against their crews. Among other articles are the following:-Whoever draws a sword upon the master of a vessel, or wilfully falsifies the compass, shall have his right hand nailed to the mast. Whoever behaves riotously shall be punished by being keelhauled. Whoever is guilty of rebellion (or mutiny) shall be thrown overboard. For the suppression of piracy, the Portuguese, in their early intercourse with India, had a summary punishment, and accompanied it with a terrible example, to deter others from the commission of the crime. Whenever they took a pirate ship, they instantly hanged every man, carried away the sails, rudder, and every thing that was valuable in the ship, and left her to be buffeted about by the winds and the waves, with the carcasses of the criminals dangling from the yards, a horrid object of terror to all who might chance to fall in with her. Even to this day a spice of the laws of Oleron still remains in the maritime code of European nations, as far as regards mutiny and piracy; and a feeling of this kind may have operated on the mind of Captain Edwards, especially as a tendency even to mutiny, or mutinous expressions, are considered, by the usage of the service, as justifying the commander of a ship of war to put the offenders in irons. Besides, the treatment of Bligh, whose admirable conduct under the unparalleled sufferings of himself and all who accompanied him in the open boat, had roused the people of England to the highest pitch of indig nation against Christian and his associates, in which Edwards no doubt participated. The following letter of Mr. Peter Heywood to his mother removes all doubt as to the character and conduct of this officer. It is an artless and pathetic tale, and, as his amiable sister says, "breathes not a syllable inconsistent with truth and honour." 66 Batavia, November 20th, 1791. "My ever-honoured and dearest Mother, "At length the time has arrived when you are once more to hear from your ill-fated son, whose conduct at the capture of that ship in which it was my fortune to embark has, I fear, from what has since happened to me, been grossly misrepresented to you by Lieutenant Bligh, who, by not knowing the real cause of my remaining on board, naturally suspected me, unhappily for me, to be a coadjutor in the mutiny; but I never, to my knowledge, while under his command, behaved myself in a manner unbecoming the station I occupied, nor so much as even entertained a thought derogatory to his honour, so as to give him the least grounds for entertaining an opinion of me so ungenerous and undeserved; for I flatter myself he cannot give a character of my conduct, while I was under his tuition, that could merit the slightest scrutiny. Oh! my dearest mother, I hope you have not so easily credited such an account of me; do but let me vindicate my conduct, and declare to you the true cause of my remaining in the ship, and you will then see how little I deserve censure, and how I have been injured by so gross an aspersion. I shall then give you a short and cursory account of what has happened to me since; but I am afraid to say a hundredth part of what I have got in store, for I am not allowed the use of writing materials, if known, so that this is done by stealth; but if it should ever come to your hands, it |