Mutiny on the Bounty had been killed, either by each other or by their Polynesian companions. No action was taken against Adams; descendants of the mutineers and their Tahitian consorts live on Pitcairn into the 21st century. The generally accepted view of Bligh as an overbearing monster and Christian as a tragic victim of circumstances, as depicted in well-known film accounts, has been challenged by late 20th- and 21st-century historians from whom a more sympathetic picture of Bligh has emerged. His Majesty's Armed Vessel (HMAV) "Bounty", or HMS "Bounty", was built in 1784 at the Blaydes shipyard in Hull, Yorkshire as a collier named
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