Wreckage of Captain Cook’s ship Endeavour may be in US harbour
Marine archaeologists said they are at least 80 per cent certain that wreckage found in the harbour includes the remains of the historic three-masted bark
The wreckage of the Endeavour, the storied British ship that 18th century explorer Captain James Cook sailed through the uncharted South Pacific, may reside submerged in Rhode Island’s Newport Harbor, researchers are set to announce on Wednesday.
Marine archaeologists said they are at least 80 per cent certain that wreckage found in the harbour includes the remains of the historic three-masted bark among the 13 vessels that were deliberately sunk by the British in 1778 during the American revolutionary war.
Cook sailed the 32-metre-long Endeavour with a crew of 94 on a 1768-1771 Pacific expedition that marked the first time Westerners laid eyes on New Zealand and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
The Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project has scheduled a briefing in Providence to provide details on its apparent discovery of the ship.
By the time of its sinking, the ship had been renamed the Lord Sandwich, a man for whom Cook also had a soft spot, having labelled the Hawaiian Islands the Sandwich Islands the first time he encountered them.
The voyage was the first Western expedition through the South Pacific to end with most of the crew alive, said Edward Gray, a Florida State University history professor and author of a 2007 book about John Ledyard, a Connecticut-born man who served on Cook’s final Pacific voyage.