Butcher and Able-bodied Seaman on board the Bounty.
A loyalist.
Robert Lamb was 21 years old when he joined the Bounty.
On December 29, 1788, he was given a dozen lashes for "suffering his Cleaver to be stolen" by Tahitians. He was the only man flogged during the voyage who did not end up as a mutineer.
"End up" is the correct expression here, because Lamb initially joined the mutineers, accepting a musket from Thompson and standing guard over the fore hatchway, but he changed his mind later and went into the launch.
On the open-boat voyage from Tofua to Timor, an incident took place on an island within the Great Barrier Reef which Bligh called Lagoon Key; he describes the event as follows:
". . . three men went to the East Key to endevour to take some birds, . . . About 12 o'clock the bird party returned with only 12 noddys . . . but if it had not been for the obstinacy of one of the party, who separated from the other two and putting the birds to flight, they might have caught a great number. Thus all my plans were totally defeated, for which on the return of the offender I gave him a good beating –"
The offender was Robert Lamb, who, upon arrival in Java, confessed that he had alone eaten nine noddies and had frightened the others away.
Lamb died, probably from a tropical disease contracted in Batavia, on the passage from there to Cape Town.
Butcher and Able-bodied Seaman on board the Bounty.
A loyalist.
Robert Lamb was 21 years old when he joined the Bounty.
On December 29, 1788, he was given a dozen lashes for "suffering his Cleaver to be stolen" by Tahitians. He was the only man flogged during the voyage who did not end up as a mutineer.
"End up" is the correct expression here, because Lamb initially joined the mutineers, accepting a musket from Thompson and standing guard over the fore hatchway, but he changed his mind later and went into the launch.
On the open-boat voyage from Tofua to Timor, an incident took place on an island within the Great Barrier Reef which Bligh called Lagoon Key; he describes the event as follows:
". . . three men went to the East Key to endevour to take some birds, . . . About 12 o'clock the bird party returned with only 12 noddys . . . but if it had not been for the obstinacy of one of the party, who separated from the other two and putting the birds to flight, they might have caught a great number. Thus all my plans were totally defeated, for which on the return of the offender I gave him a good beating –"
The offender was Robert Lamb, who, upon arrival in Java, confessed that he had alone eaten nine noddies and had frightened the others away.
Lamb died, probably from a tropical disease contracted in Batavia, on the passage from there to Cape Town.
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