HMS Pandora was sent to the Pacific to capture the Bounty mutineers but struck the Great Barrier Reef in August 1791. Thirty-five people died, including four prisoners held in the structure known as Pandora's Box. Survivors crossed by boat to Timor under Captain Edward Edwards.

Pandora became a darker sequel within the poetic mythology of the Bounty, representing punishment, confinement and imperial pursuit. Poets and historical writers have repeatedly exploited the classical resonance of its name and the grimly literal phrase Pandora's Box.