Capt. Cook’s Endeavour Found in Newport – Maybe
An unusual, and unseemly, public dispute has broken out between two scientific organizations trying to identify the remains of a sunken ship in the Newport, Rhode Island, harbor that may be the historic 18th Century Endeavour that once explored the South Seas under Capt. James Cook. In one corner, we have the Australian Maritime Museum, whose chief executive, Kevin Sumption, announced last week that the Newport shipwreck was indeed the Endeavour and was “the final resting place of one of the most important and contentious vessels in Australia’s maritime history.” In the other, the head of the Rhode Island Marine…