Browsing: Endeavour

Cruising Life
By

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…

Cruising Life
By

Captain Cook’s Famed Discovery Ship Endeavour, Sunk During Revolution, Found in Newport Harbor

Back in August, 1768, British Navy Lieutenant James Cook left Plymouth, England, as the captain of HMS Endeavour, a 97’ 8” bark carrying a crew of 94 and 3,321 square yards of sail on a voyage of discovery. Cook, who was also a cartographer, was charged with cruising to the South Pacific to observe Venus crossing the sun and to find the continent then known as Terra Australis Incognita; we now know it simply as Australia. Cook made landfall in Tahiti in April, 1769, to record the Venus transit, and then went on to map New Zealand; he reached the east…