Dead Man Secrets

Finding Descendants from the Pandora Wreck

  • Home
  • Introduction
  • The Pandora’s Story
    • Human Toll
      • Before the wrecking
      • During the wrecking
      • After the wrecking
  • Dead Man Secrets
    • Tom, Dick & Harry
      • Tom
      • Dick
      • Harry
  • Family Histories
    • Robert Bowler
    • William Cray
    • James Cullimore
    • George Eglington
    • Robert Fea
    • Richard Mackie
    • James Miller
    • George Stewart
  • About
  • Blog
  • Contact
    • Privacy policy

Welcome to Dead Man Secrets

This project is a genealogical search for the living male descendants of the 35 men who died on the Great Barrier Reef in 1791 during the wrecking of the Pandora. We started with a pilot-project concentrating on tracking male descendants of 8 of these 35 men - 6 young men from Orkney and 2 young men from the London area- who were born in the 1760s. The intention is to find matching DNA (Y) signatures to Y chromosome sequences obtained at Bond University in 2010 from 3 skeletons recovered from the Pandora wreck in the 1990s. Could one of the three skeletons be your ancestor? If your family name is Bowler, Cullimore, Croy, Eglington, Fea, Mackey, Millar or Stewart , one of these 8 men may be your ancestor. You can also check whether your family name is among the other 27 men who died in 1791 when the Pandora was wrecked. Please contact me if you think your family tree may provide a link.

Intro to the Project

Pandora Mast

A DNA case study from the Pandora shipwreck: who were the Pandora’s skeletons nick-named ‘Tom, Dick & Harry’? Could one of them  be your ancestor? The skeletons represent 3 of the 35 … [Read More...]

Pandora’s Story

The Pandora - Abandon Ship

The saga of the mutiny in the Bounty is one of the best known stories from the annals of Pacific exploration history. Most people have probably heard something about it and perhaps also know the names … [Read More...]

The Orkney connection

harry-reconstruction-and-skull

Orkney links: Can Tom, Dick or Harry’s DNA be matched with an Orcadian? The five Orcadians who died in the wreck and George Stewart, who was also from Orkney, are the focus of this 'reverse' … [Read More...]

Pandora wreck’s 35 dead

shipmate-in-water-2

The Pandora wreck's 35 dead: 4 prisoners died along with 31 men belonging to the Pandora's crew. Bligh described the 'Bountys' but there are no known descriptions of the … Read more

Recent News

ABC radio interview

This is an edited version of the interview that was recorded a few days ago at the ABC Southbank studio in Brisbane. It was broadcast this morning in the program series  'Conversations with Richard Fidler'. You can listen to the interview or download the mp3 file. … [Read More...]

92 intact skeletons from the Mary Rose

Bones of more than 170 individuals were recovered from the wreck of the Tudor warship Mary Rose. 92 individuals are almost entirely intact.         … [Read More...]

rss

Return to top of page

Copyright © 2023 · The Pandora Wreck - Dead Man Secrets · Log in