The Lady Nelson remained behind at Port Cockburn, partly to act as a guardship and partly to bring to the settlement the needed stores and supplies from the islands to the northwards. These islands, as well as Coepang, afforded fresh meat in the form of buffalo beef, and it proved an inestimable boon to many ships which traded in these waters. Fresh provisions being scarce at the settlement* (* See Major Campbell's report.) Captain Barlow sent the Lady Nelson for a cargo of buffaloes. In February 1825, the little ship set forth on her mission, from which she was doomed never to return. As she left Port Cockburn her Commander was warned to avoid an island called Baba, one of the Serwatti Islands, which was infested with pirates who were very daring and very cruel. It is supposed that the warning was unheeded, for there the little vessel met her end. The schooner Stedcombe, Captain Burns (or Barnes), from England, arrived at Melville Island when anxiety was being felt there regarding the Lady Nelson's fate. After her stores were landed, as scurvy was increasing among the colonists, Captain Barlow chartered the vessel on behalf of the Government and despatched her to Timor for buffaloes: she was also instructed to search for the missing Lady Nelson. Her captain remained at the settlement, and the chief mate took charge of the schooner. The Stedcombe never returned, and later it was learned that she too had been captured by pirates, off Timor Laut, about sixty miles eastward of Baba, where the Lady Nelson had been taken. The Serwatti Islands form a chain which stretches from the east end of Timor as far as Baba. When Lieutenant Kolff of the Dutch Navy visited Baba in July 1825 the inhabitants were shy and deserted the village of Tepa on his landing. He was convinced that a crime had been committed, and learned that "some months previously an English brig manned by about a dozen Europeans had anchored off Alata on the south-east coast and had engaged in barter with the natives who were on board in great numbers, and who taking the opportunity of 5 men being on shore...attacked and killed the people on the brig as well as those in the boat when they returned." Earl, who translated Kolff's journal, says that "the natives received not the slightest reproof from Lieutenant Kolff for this outrage."