Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse In November 1790, Captain Edward Edwards—in command of HMS "Pandora"—had sailed from England with orders to comb the Pacific for the mutineers of HMS "Bounty". In March of the following year, "Pandora" arrived at Tahiti and picked up 14 "Bounty" men who had stayed on that island. Although some of the 14 had not joined the mutiny, all were imprisoned and shackled in a cramped "cage" built on the deck, which the men grimly nicknamed "Pandora's Box". "Pandora" then left Tahiti in search of "Bounty" and the leader of the mutiny, Fletcher Christian. Captain Edwards' search for the remaining mutineers
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935 film) a Best Picture Oscar and has come to be re-evaluated by some critics. In 1984 Mel Gibson played Christian opposite Anthony Hopkins as Bligh in a film (based not upon the Nordhoff-Hall novels but on an historical work by Richard Hough) called "The Bounty". This latest version, which gives a far more sympathetic view of Bligh, is considered to be the closest to historical events. The 1935 version was itself not the first film account of the mutiny. In 1933 an Australian film entitled "In the Wake of the Bounty", with the then-unknown Errol Flynn as Fletcher Christian, was released,