A centuries-old mystery may finally be coming to an end. A team of archaeologists has planned a major excavation for the HMS Endeavour, the ship used by Captain James Cook when he first traveled to Australia.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/S. Khan
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Researchers in the US have announced they are relatively certain they have located the remains of the HMS Endeavour, the famed ship used by Captain James Cook when he first traveled to Australia and New Zealand.
"Early indications are that the team has narrowed the possible site for the wreck of HMB Endeavour to one site, which is very promising," Kevin Sumption, head of the Australian National Maritime Museum, part of the US-Australian team looking for the vessel, said Wednesday.
However, Sumption warned that "a lot more detailed work, analysis and research has to happen before we can definitively say we have found the remains of James Cook's HMB Endeavour."
Cook went on his famous voyage from 1768 to 1771, becoming the first Englishman to set foot on the east coast of Australia, forever altering the history of the land.
Ship scuttled in American Revolution
After Cook's voyages, the ship was decommissioned and renamed the Lord Sandwich II. The ship's private owner allowed it to be used for troop transport during the American War of Independence, which led to its being scuttled in Narragansett Bay off Rhode Island in 1778.
Since then the ship has been thought to be lost, although there have been several expeditions in search of the vessel.
A replica of the ship located in Sydney's Darling Harbour (pictured above) shows how small and cramped the vessel would have been for the 94 people aboard.
Archaeologists working to recover the remains said they have planned a major excavation for 2019, which they hope will definitively prove that the wreck is that of the Endeavour.
The Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project has said it will release a detailed 3D map of the proposed excavation site on Friday.
A journey to the ends of the Earth
In Britain he's a celebrated explorer. To the Indigenous peoples of the south he's a colonial oppressor. This is the story of Captain Cook's voyages.
Image: The British Library Board
James Cook
The British explorer and cartographer was born in 1728 in Yorkshire and learned the essential skills for his later voyages during his time serving in the Seven Years' War. His three voyages to the Pacific are considered the starting point of European trade with and colonization of the region. In 1799, on his third voyage, Cook was killed in Hawaii after a dispute broke into violence.
Image: The British Library Board
Kangaroo by Sydney Parkinson
The name for the Australian marsupial, kangaroo, comes from the Guugu Yimithirr word "gangurru." The Guugu Yimithirr people lived in northern Queensland, where the ship Endeavour landed in June 1770. Sydney Parkinson, an artist on the voyage, compiled a vocabulary of the Aboriginal peoples' language.
Image: The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London
Three paddles from New Zealand by Sydney Parkinson
The Endeavour landed in New Zealand in October 1769. The indigenous people of New Zealand, the Maori, had lived there since about 1250-1300 AD. Violence erupted between the British and the Maori people on the first day, the British firing their muskets with fatal consequences. British sovereignty over New Zealand was not established until 1840 when the Treaty of Waitangi was signed.
Image: The British Library Board
Cook's chart of New Zealand
Cook was a skilled cartographer, and some of his charts were still used by sailors in the 1950's. Joseph Banks, a wealthy botanist, accompanied Cook on his first voyage. Banks and the party of artists and scientists he brought with him are credited with providing a glimpse into the cultural lives of the people they encountered through their collections and illustrations.
Image: The British Library Board
Tahitian musicians by Tupaia
During his first voyage onboard the Endeavour, Captain Cook landed in Tahiti in April 1769. The official mission was to chart the passage of the planet Venus between the Earth and the sun, but Cook was also following secret orders to search for the mythical lands thought to lie in the south. The British fort in Tahiti became a meeting point and trade center for the British and the islanders.
Image: The British Library Board
Inhabitants of the Island of Tierra del Feugo in their hut by Alexander Buchan
Tierra del Fuego, off the southern tip of South America, was one of the first stops Cook made on his Endeavour voyage. During this time the artist Alexander Buchan drew pictures of the Haush people, the land's inhabitants.
Image: The British Library Board
Entertainments at Lifuka on the reception of Captain Cook by John Webber
Cook first landed on the Tongan islands during his second voyage in October 1773. Taken with the warm welcome he received from locals, he named Tonga the "Friendly islands." Many scholars now believe that the Tongan chiefs had actually planned to attack Cook and his crew and seize his ships before the plot was called off.
Image: The British Library Board
Banks and a Maori man by Tupaia
During his stay in Tahiti in April 1769, Cook became friends with Tupaia, a priest and navigator from a nearby island. Tupaia joined the voyage and sailed on the Endeavour to New Zealand and Australia. Similarities between the Tahitian langauge and the language of the Maori people in New Zealand meant that Tupaia could act as an interpreter.
Image: The British Library Board
A Canoe of Tongatapu by William Hodges
William Hodges was appointed the official artist of Cook's second voyage. The goal was to discover a Great Southern Continent, which the British thought encircled the South Pole. The voyage proved that this great land mass was non-existent, and caused the voyagers to cross the Antarctic Circle three times.
