Mutiny on the Bounty were able to restore peace. After Young succumbed to asthma in 1800, Adams took responsibility for the education and well-being of the nine remaining women and 19 children. Using the ship's Bible from "Bounty", he taught literacy and Christianity, and kept peace on the island. This was the situation in February 1808, when the American sealer "Topaz" came unexpectedly upon Pitcairn, landed, and discovered the, by then, thriving community. News of "Topaz"'s discovery did not reach Britain until 1810, when it was overlooked by an Admiralty preoccupied by war with France. In 1814, two British warships, HMS "Briton" and HMS
Timor "HMS Pandora", sent to arrest the "Bounty" mutineers, landed in 1791 after that ship sank in the Great Barrier Reef. The island has been politically divided in two parts for centuries. The Dutch and Portuguese fought for control of the island until it was divided by treaty in 1859, but they still did not formally resolve the matter of the boundary until 1912. West Timor, was known as Dutch Timor until 1949 when it became Indonesian Timor, a part of the nation of Indonesia which was formed from the old Netherlands East Indies; while East Timor was known as Portuguese