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More than 250 years after she was sunk, the final resting place of the vessel commanded by Captain James Cook on his first voyage of discovery has been confirmed.
HMS Endeavour, which Cook used to map the Pacific Ocean and claim Australia for the British, now lies off the coast of the US state of Rhode Island. The find was confirmed by the Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM), reaffirming its own controversial 2022 report.
Between 1768 and 1771, under Cook’s command, the ship became the first European vessel to reach eastern Australia, with the captain going ashore in what is now Botany Bay in 1770.
The ship had already become the first European vessel to reach New Zealand in more than a century, and had allowed Cook to claim the Polynesian islands of Huahine, Bora Bora, and Raiatea for the British Crown.
After years in private hands, Endeavour was rehired as a troop ship during the American War of Independence with the new name Lord Sandwich. In 1778, she was scuttled during an American-French blockade of Newport Harbour, in Rhode Island, along with four other British transports.
A 2022 report into Endeavour’s location by the ANMM was initially dismissed by colleagues at the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project (RIMAP), who described it as ‘premature’. But the museum stood by its final report, comparing the location of British timber in Endeavour’s plans to that found on the wreck’s main- and foremasts.
Museum director Daryl Karp said the find was ‘the culmination of 25 years of detailed and meticulous archaeological study on this important vessel’.
The museum noted that RIMAP had not ruled out other possible sites for the Endeavour’s final resting place, but Karp added: ‘This final report marks our definitive statement on the project.’
The wreck was never salvaged and researchers say that anything of value on board would have been removed before her scuttling..
