Timor. While the vessel was going down, instead of the prisoners being
released, by the express order of Captain Edwards eleven of them were
actually kept ironed, and if it had not been for the humanity of
boatswain's mate James Moulter, who burst open the prison, they would have
all been drowned like rats in a cage. This is not the one-sided version of
the prisoners only, but is so confirmed by the officers of the _Pandora_
that Sir John Barrow in his book says that the "statement of the brutal
and unfeeling behaviour of Edwards is but too true."

There were ninety-nine survivors, divided between four boats, and they had
1000 miles to voyage. They landed at Coupang on September 19th, after
undergoing the greatest suffering, aggravated in the case of the prisoners
by the most wanton cruelty on the part of Edwards. From here they were
sent to England for trial, arriving at Spithead on June 19th, 1792, four
years and four months after they had left in the _Bounty_, of which time
these poor prisoners had spent fifteen months in irons. In the following
September the accused were tried by court-martial at Portsmouth Harbour.
Bligh was away on his second breadfruit voyage, but he had left behind him
as much evidence as he could collect that would be likely to secure
conviction, and one of the officers so backed up his statements that young
Heywood, a boy of fifteen, be it remembered, came near to being hanged.
Bligh's suppression of facts which would have proved that the youngsters
Stewart and Heywood were mere spectators at the worst of the mutiny, Sir
John Barrow suggests, has "the appearance of a deliberate act of malice."

The result of the trial was the just acquittal of four of the petty
officers and seamen, the conviction of Heywood, of Morrison, boatswain's
mate (a man of education, who had kept a diary of the whole business), and
of four seamen. Three of these last, one of them seventeen years of age
at the time of the mutiny, were hanged in Portsmouth [Sidenote: 1807]