James Morrison (1760–1807) was a British seaman and mutineer who took part in the Mutiny on the Bounty. Early career James Morrison was a native of Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland where his father was a merchant and land entrepreneur. He joined the navy at 18, serving as clerk in the Suffolk, midshipman in the Termagant, and acting gunner in the Hind. In 1783, he passed his master gunner's examination. The Bounty James Morrison was the boatswain's mate on board the Bounty. The master gunner's position having been filled two days prior to his application, he may have taken the lesser post because of his eagerness to go along on the 'scientific expedition.' After the mutiny, Morrison was one of 16 mutineers who returned to Tahiti after the failed attempt to build a colony on Tubuai, while Fletcher Christian and 8 others sailed the Bounty on to Pitcairn Island. Along with the others who then lived as 'beachcombers' in Tahiti, he was captured here by Captain Edward Edwards of HMS Pandora on 29 March 1791, and brought back to England for court martial. While on Tahiti, he led an eight-month effort to build a schooner from local timber with which he secretly hoped to get to Batavia in the Dutch East Indies and from there return to England. He kept this to himself until the project was nearing completion, when he took a few others into his confidence. The schooner completed and christened Resolution, they spent many days boiling seawater to get salt sufficient to cure hundreds of pounds of pork for which they in turn had to build casks. They departed from Tahiti the day before the Pandora dropped anchor in Matavai Bay; but in the end the voyage was given up as impracticable owing to their lack of navigation instruments, problems with the schooner's rigging and their inability to carry sufficient water. Captain Edward Edwards confiscated the schooner, ordered her re-rigged with canvas and rope from Pandora'''s stores and renamed her Matavai. Pandora departed with the mutineers locked up in "Pandora's Box", and the schooner, manned by some of the Pandora's crew, was taken along as a tender. Six weeks later Pandora and Matavai became separated, and after waiting for her for several weeks at a previously agreed rendezvous point off Anamooka, Edwards gave her and her crew up for lost, sailing on. The Pandora