Mutiny on the Bounty "Pandora" to apprehend the mutineers. Fourteen were captured in Tahiti and imprisoned on board "Pandora", which then searched without success for Christian's party that had hidden on Pitcairn Island. After turning back towards England, "Pandora" ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef, with the loss of 31 crew and four prisoners from "Bounty". The 10 surviving detainees reached England in June 1792 and were court martialled; four were acquitted, three were pardoned and three were hanged. Christian's group remained undiscovered on Pitcairn until 1808, by which time only one mutineer, John Adams, remained alive. Almost all his fellow-mutineers, including Christian,
HMS Bounty sailed for the island of Tubuai, where they tried to settle. After three months of bloody conflict with the natives, however, they returned to Tahiti. Sixteen of the mutineers – including the four loyalists who had been unable to accompany Bligh – remained there, taking their chances that the Royal Navy would find them and bring them to justice. Immediately after setting the sixteen men ashore in Tahiti in September 1789, Fletcher Christian, eight other crewmen, six Tahitian men, and 11 women, one with a baby, set sail in the "Bounty" hoping to elude the Royal Navy. According to a