Edward Edwards (Royal Navy Officer) - Biography

Biography

The fifth of six children, Edward Edwards was born in Water Newton, a village near Peterborough, to Richard Edwards of Water Newton and Mary Fuller of Caldicot. He was born in 1742 and christened in St Remegius Church, Water Newton. He never married.

On 7 September 1759, age 17, he was commissioned a lieutenant. To qualify for this commission he would have been required, in addition to passing a lieutenant’s exam, to produce evidence of at least six years of sea time. No documents have been located to date which would establish exactly when, and under whose patronage, he started his naval career. It is likely he first went to sea as a captain's servant when about 10 years old and subsequently completed at least part of the required sea time as a midshipman.

His naval career after he was commissioned included service in the following ships, before being appointed to Pandora:

• HMS Nassau, 64-gun third rate, as fourth lieutenant
• HMS Lowestoffe, 32-gun fifth rate, as second lieutenant
• HMS Zephyr, 14-gun sloop, as first lieutenant, under Captain J. Inglis
• HMS Ferret, 14-gun sloop, as first lieutenant
• HMS Active, 28-gun sixth rate, as second lieutenant
• HMS Pembroke, 60-gun fourth rate, as third lieutenant, later promoted to first lieutenant
• HMS Augusta, 64-gun third rate, as first lieutenant under Captain Francis Reynolds (later the Earl of Ducie)
• HMS Carcass, 8-gun bomb vessel, 22 April 1778 – 5 December 1780, commanding officer
• HMS Hornet, 14-gun sloop, commanding officer; service in the Caribbean. Promoted to post captain on 25 April 1781, and transferred to command HMS Narcissus
• HMS Narcissus, 20-gun sixth rate, (25 May 1781), paid off on 27 March 1784;

He spent the following six years on half-pay after the end of the American Revolutionary war; until 6 August 1790 when appointed to take command of the frigate Pandora. He received new orders on 11 August to prepare his new command for a journey to "remote parts", on a mission in pursuit of the Bounty mutineers.

With the help of former Bounty midshipman Thomas Hayward - a Bligh loyalist recently returned to England from the South Pacific - Edwards succeeded in finding fourteen mutineers, but the Pandora was wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef on 29 August 1791 during the journey home from the South Pacific. Four mutineers and 31 of Pandora's crew died in the wreck. After an arduous open boat voyage from the wreck to Timor and on to Batavia (Jakarta), only 78 men of Pandora's original 134-strong crew eventually made it back to England, accompanied by ten mutineers. For Hayward this was the second time in as many years that he found himself in an open boat making for a safe haven in the Dutch East Indies.

Edwards was court-martialled on 17 September 1792 for the loss of the Pandora. Immediately prior to the proceedings, he submitted to the Admiralty his account of the events leading up to the sinking. All of his officers supported Edwards' contention that the frigate had been lost due to circumstances beyond anyone's control.

The court-martial was attended by William Dillon, then a midshipman, who later became a vice-admiral in the Royal Navy and described Edwards in his memoirs as a 'fine, venerable- looking officer. His appearance completely absorbed all my attention during the trial, and I felt an inward satisfaction at the result, after all the hardships and dangers he had overcome'.

Captain Edwards and his officers were exonerated and subsequently Edwards served for a few years as a 'regulating' captain (recruiting officer) in Argyle and in Hull and then resigned himself to inactivity on the half pay list. However, he was promoted to vice-admiral in 1809 and eventually ended his career as admiral of the white, titularly the third most senior officer in the Royal Navy. He died at age 73 in 1815 and was buried in St Remigius Church in Water Newton, a village in Huntingdonshire.

His reputation and character were effectively blackened by members of the Heywood family, who were unable to forgive him for what they perceived as excessively harsh treatment of their son, Bounty midshipman Peter Heywood, tried and convicted as a mutineer and pardoned. Yet Edwards had staunch supporters among other officers who had served under his command and he was also remembered by his niece as a "sweet old man", often out on a walk in the country lanes around his native Water Newton and Uppingham where he owned several farms. According to an obituary in the Lincoln, Stamford & Rutland Mercury (21 April 1815), he suffered for the rest of his life from the effects of the hardships he endured during the open boat voyage to Timor after the loss of the Pandora. This could be the reason the Admiralty never appointed him to a sea-going command after his court-martial in 1792.