text: You and three other men promptly surrender yourselves to the first sailors who reach the shore, clapped in irons you are swiftly brought back to the ship where, to your surprise, former Bounty shipmate Midshipman Thomas Hayward is waiting to identify you. You are imprisoned in a makeshift prison on the ship's quarterdeck and over the next month all of your remaining companions are captured.
  
  You learn that after the Mutiny Bligh sailed his overcrowded boat to safety and returned to England with eleven surviving companions out of the eighteen who were in the boat with him. He reported the Mutiny to the Admiralty who dispatched this ship, the HMS Pandora, to Tahiti to arrest you all. You and your fourteen companions are questioned on the whereabouts of the other nine Mutineers and the Bounty but you can only tell them that you last saw them sail away in the autumn of 1789.
  
  The Pandora leaves Tahiti that May and spends the next three months scouring the Pacific for your remaining companions but finds no trace of them. One day the Pandora suddenly runs aground off the Great Barrier Reef. Despite desperate efforts that go on for twenty hours the damage is too severe to be repaired and the ship starts to sink increasingly fast. Finally, in desperation the order if given to abandon ship.
  
  For a few moments it seems that you and your fellow prisoners will all be left shackled to the quarterdeck to drown but as water washes over the main deck a sailor remembers you all and runs up to unlock your leg irons. He gives the keys to you and orders you to unlock the rest. You have managed to free ten of your fourteen companions when the Quarterdeck vanishes beneath your feet into cold clear seawater. Your remaining trapped companions shout for help.
  > abandon the sinking ship and swim for one of the nearby boats
  Recognizing it would be suicide to remain on the ship any longer you dive into the sea and wade towards one of the four boats the sailors of the Pandora have succeeded in launching. You are hauled aboard and watch as the last of the HMS Pandora vanishes from sight. It takes with it four of your companions were still manacled to the ship: Midshipman George Stewart and Sailors Henry Hillbrant, Richard Skinner and John Sumner.
  
  Together with your ten surviving companions you join the other survivors in a three-week open boat voyage, not unlike that Bligh endured two years before) to Coupang in Timor with no mishap. From there you travel on to Batavia on Jakarta and from there take passage aboard the HMS Gorgon, arriving back in England in June of 1792, nearly five years after you left her aboard the Bounty.
  
  It is good fortune for you that William Bligh is not in England at the moment, having left the previous year to fulfil his mission of taking breadfruit from Tahiti to the slave plantations in Jamaica. Many of your former comrades are in England however and seven (Sailing Master John Fryer, Boatswain William Cole, Gunner William Peckover, Carpenter William Purcell, Midshipmen John Hallett and Thomas Haywood and Seaman John Smith) have been recruited to testify against you and your companions in your trials that August.
  
  For four of your companions the trials are an easy affair: Carpenter's Mates Thomas McIntosh and Charles Norman, Armourer Joseph Coleman and Seaman Michael Byrne are acquitted when letters are produced written by Bligh confirming they wanted to join him in the boat but were unable to due to lack of space. For you and six of your companions things look much more dangerous and all of you are keen to argue you took no active part in the mutiny but need to explain your failure to act.
  
  Your companions intend to do this in two ways. Midshipman Peter Heywood, Boatswain's Mate James Morrison and Seaman William Muspratt intend to claim they were too confused by what was happening to act. Seamen Thomas Burkett, Thomas Ellison and John Millward intend to claim they were too intimidated by the Mutineers and that they intended to recapture the Bounty at a later date if they could find support among the crew. You need to choose which defense line you go with.
  > too confused to act
  You decide to go with the claim that you were too confused by what was happening to act. Somewhat surprisingly this defense works with the Judges: though sentenced to death you, Heywood, Morrison and Muspratt are pardoned for your part in the Mutiny. Burkett, Ellison and Millward are executed by hanging a few months later. You and your companions all feel the most incredible relief at your very narrow escape, Muspratt is so affected by his brush with death he rarely speaks again.
  
  The following year Bligh returns to England after a successful voyage which brought breadfruit from Tahiti to Jamaica, only to discover the slaves there would not eat it. He is furious that you and your companions escaped death and writes an account roundly condemning you all. Withstanding his fury you are one of the eight Bounty mutineers that survived to return to England. Not a day goes by when you do not wonder what happened to Fletcher Christian and his eight companions who vanished that autumn afternoon so long ago aboard the Bounty.
  
  You now have a decision to make: whether you return to the sea or retire to the land. McIntosh, Coleman and Byrne have all already turned their backs on the sea and drifted out of touch while Peter Heywood, James Morrison, Charles Norman and William Muspratt are all intended to resume a life on the ocean's waves. You need to decide whether you too will retire ashore or return to the sea.
  > retire from the sea
  The years go by and as you age you read about what befalls your former comrades.
  
  Carpenter's Mate Charles Norman dies of a disease, probably brought on by his experiences, in 1793. Seaman William Muspratt also dies at sea of a disease in 1797. Boatswain's Mate James Morrison drowns when the HMS Blenheim sinks in 1807. Midshipman Peter Heywood serves honorably in the Navy for twenty-two more years, retiring from the Navy in 1816 with the rank of Captain. He dies in 1831, his former status as a Pirate and Mutineer hidden behind a long and distinguished service. You live on, well into your sixties and in your later years you finally learn what happened to the Bounty and its missing nine Mutineers, including Fletcher Christian.
  
  In 1808 an American ship, the Topaz, happens upon isolated Pitcairn Island. There the sailors are astonished to discover a thriving Tahitian Community ruled over by one man: John Adams. He is the sole survivor of the nine Mutineers and six Natives who landed on that island and variously killed each other or died of illness leaving Adams patriarch of a thriving community of forty-six people. The Admiralty decides against taking any action.
  
  John Adams, the King of Pitcairn Island, dies in 1829.