Cyprus mutiny the mutiny in which the mutineers are depicted as birds. Cyprus mutiny The "Cyprus" mutiny took place in 1829 off the British penal settlement of Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania, Australia). Convicts seized the brig and sailed her to Canton, China, where they scuttled her and claimed to be castaways from another vessel. On the way, "Cyprus" visited Japan during the height of the period of severe Japanese restrictions on the entry of foreigners, the first Australian ship to do so. The mutineers were eventually captured. Two of them, George James Davis and William Watts, were hanged at Execution Dock,
Hanged, drawn and quartered that for "rebellion, assassination or other violence ...we are of opinion that the extreme penalty must remain", although the most recent occasion (and ultimately, the last) on which anyone had been sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered was in November 1839, following the Chartist Newport Rising—and those men sentenced to death were instead transported. The report highlighted the changing public mood toward public executions (brought about in part by the growing prosperity created by the Industrial Revolution). Home Secretary Spencer Horatio Walpole told the commission that executions had "become so demoralizing that, instead of its having a good effect,