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:''For the US Senator, see Edward I. Edwards.''
Admiral 'Edward Edwards' (1742-1815) was a British naval officer best known as the captain of HMS Pandora[1], which the Admiralty sent to the South Pacific in pursuit of the HMAV Bounty mutineers.
With the help of former ''Bounty'' midshipman Thomas Hayward Edwards succeeded in finding some of the mutineers, but the ''Pandora'' shipwrecked before reaching England on the journey home. Edwards and his officers were subsequently court-martialed on HMS Hector and exonerated. However, Capt.Edwards never received another sea-going command. He subsequently served[2][3] for a few years as a 'regulating' captain (recruiting officer) in Argyle and in Hull and then resigned himself to (apparently inevitable) inactivity on the half pay list. However, he was promoted to Vice Admiral in 1809 and eventually ended his career as Admiral of the White -an honorary title- the third highest ranking officer in the Royal Navy. He died at age 73 in 1815 and was buried in St Remigius Church in Water Newton. He also hailed from Water Newton, a village in Huntingdonshire near Stamford (Lincs)
His reputation was blackened by members of the Heywood family, who were unable to forgive him for what they perceived as excessively harsh treatment of ''Bounty'' midshipman Peter Heywood. Yet Edwards had staunch supporters among other officers who had served under his command and was also remembered by his niece as a "sweet old man", often out on a walk in the country lanes around Water Newton. According to an obituary in the ''Lincoln, Stamford & Rutland Mercury'' (21 April 1815), he suffered for the rest of his life from the effects of the hardships he endured during the open boat voyage to Timor after the loss of the ''Pandora''.
Notwithstanding his niece's memories, Edwards -and the actions of his junior officer Lt. John Larkin {died 1830 Athlone}-conduct on the ''Pandora'' was subsequently regarded in many circles as every bit as cruel as popular fiction (unjustifiably) claims that William Bligh was on the ''Bounty''. Edwards kept and treated his captives in miserable conditions as if they had already been convicted (as it was, four of them had been identified by Bligh as being innocent and they were subsequently acquitted in London). Four captives and thirty-one crew members perished when the ''Pandora'' wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef. Edwards was both neglient toward the captives lives-when his ship sank by refusing to order "Pandora's Box"
shuttle door to be opened and refusing to let them use a old sail to prevent them from being badly sunburned on a reef-and by collectively referring and treating them all as muntiners and pirates-even though only three of the surving captives had been actual muntiners.