By Robert Hentschel
Most of us know of Captain Cook and his ship, Endeavour. However, few give thought to what became of the vessel after her epic voyage.
Cook was acclaimed upon his return to England, but Endeavour faded into obscurity.
Dr James Hunter, Manager of Maritime Archeology at the Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM), participated in the search for Endeavour’s final resting place.
“With most histories of it [Endeavour] at the time, it ended with Cook’s voyage,” Hunter said. “Untangling that post-Cook history has been fascinating, because we’ve found out that, ‘oh, it went to the Falkland Islands three times, and it was involved in the American Revolution, and it was a P.O.W. ship’ and all this other crazy stuff that nobody really bothered to look into.”
For many years it was thought that Endeavour had been sold to French merchants for use as a whaling vessel and renamed La Liberte, eventually running aground in Newport, Rhode Island, and left to rot.
However, in 1997 two Australian historians, Mike Connell and Des Liddy, uncovered evidence that it was Cook’s other ship, Resolution, that had been renamed La Liberte, and that Endeavour had been renamed Lord Sandwich.
“They found the entry for a vessel called Lord Sandwich and, underneath, it said Endeavour. And if you looked at the tonnage, where it was built, the year it was built, that all aligned with Endeavour,” said Hunter.
Subsequently, Dr Kathy Abbass, head of the Rhode Island Marine Archeology Project (RIMAP), uncovered evidence that a vessel called Lord Sandwich, scuttled by the British in Newport Harbour during the Battle of Rhode Island in 1778, was the former Endeavour.
With Britain facing open rebellion in its North American colonies, the Royal Navy had needed ships to carry troops and cargo there. Endeavour, having been sold into private hands, was offered for the purpose. She was initially refused due to her poor condition, but after some repairs and a change of name to Lord Sandwich, she was accepted. Lord Sandwich transported Hessian mercenaries from Europe to North America, and later served as a prison ship in Newport Harbour.
RIMAP set about finding the wreck of Lord Sandwich/ex-Endeavour, and in 1999 the ANMM joined them.
“There was a real keen interest at the museum to find the Endeavour, because of the significance of the ship,” Hunter said.
While conducting research relating to Lord Sandwich, Nigel Erskine, the former Head of Research at ANMM, found a series of letters written by a man named John Knowles.
“He was writing back to the Admiralty and the Transport Board and telling them, ‘look, the Americans and the French are coming. We need to sink a bunch of ships. We’ve selected these ships. This is where we’re going to put them’. And sure enough, between what he described as the north end of Goat Island and the North Battery, was [written] Lord Sandwich,” said Hunter.
“That was a huge, huge find. Had Nigel not found that document, we’d probably still be trying to find it [Lord Sandwich].”
The search team found four 18th century shipwrecks in the area indicated by Knowles. One of them stood out as the best possibility of being Endeavour, because of its overall size and the size of its visible timbers.
“I got a quick dive on it in 2017,” said Hunter. “And it was weird. It was a vibe. I was on that wreck and I was like, ‘s…, I think this might be it!’ There was really something about this wreck.”
“We were never going to find a bell that said Endeavour or Lord Sandwich on it,” Hunter said. “We didn’t expect we were going to find any of that.”
But as investigation of the wreck progressed, other evidence began mounting.
Timber samples taken from the hull and keel were found to be white oak and elm respectively, indicating that the ship had been built in England.
Scuttling holes were found on the wreck, confirming that the ship had been deliberately sunk.
Timber sizes, architectural features and dimensions of the wreck matched those of Endeavour.
There was evidence of repairs to the keel, in the area that Cook had recorded as damaged when Endeavour hit Endeavour Reef off the east coast of Australia.
Four four-pounder cannon were recovered. Endeavour had been equipped with 10 four-pounder cannon, but six had been dumped overboard when she hit Endeavour Reef.
“The fact that we have all this archaeological information and it matches that closely to plans that were made off the vessel after it was constructed, that was telling me a lot,” Hunter said. “Because in my entire 30-year career, I have never had that happen. This is the only wreck site I have ever worked on, where I saw all of the archaeological record and the archival record come together like that.”
In 2022 the ANMM announced that Endeavour’s resting place had finally been found.
Feature image: Replica of HMB Endeavour at the Australian National Maritime Museum. Photo: Hpeterswald/CC/Wikimedia Commons
