HMS Endeavour in the news

HM Bark Endeavour Replica

Operated by the Australian National Maritime Museum

Newport made the news earlier this week with the announcement that researchers from the Rhode Island Marine Archeology Project are getting very close to discovering the wreck site of HMS Endeavour in Newport Harbor. Endeavour gained fame as the ship that Lieutenant James Cook commanded on a three year voyage of scientific discovery in the Pacific Ocean. Among other stops, Cook visited Hawaii, New Zealand, and the east coast of Australia from 1768 to 1771. Although he did not find the fabled continent of Terra Australis that was part of the reason for his voyage, he did record the locations of several Pacific islands on European maps for the first time.

The Royal Navy sold off Endeavour in 1775, but shortly after the outbreak of war in the American colonies, the Admiralty found itself in need of more ships to carry supplies across the Atlantic. Endeavour’s owner renamed her Lord Sandwich and sold her back to the navy, which promptly changed the name to Lord Sandwich 2 since another ship already carried the original designation. She set out in a fleet of 100 vessels from Portsmouth, England in May 1776 carrying two companies of Hessian soldiers bound for New York. Shortly after New York fell to the British, they occupied Newport which became the home of Lord Sandwich 2 for the next two years. Her end came in 1778 when she was scuttled along with twelve other ships in an attempt to stop the French navy from entering Newport Harbor.

Wood fragments from HMS Endeavour

75.05.04

The search for the wreck of Endeavour has produced a fair amount of confusion for historians over the years. We have in our collection a few small pieces of wood from La Liberté, a French whaling ship that ran aground in Newport Harbor in 1793. When these pieces came to the Museum in 1954, it was thought that La Liberté was the renamed ship that had originally been Endeavour. Parts of La Liberté found their way to museums all over the world and even flew on the Space Shuttle! Years later, new evidence suggested that La Liberté was actually another of Cook’s ships, HMS Resolution. Cook made his second and third voyages to the Pacific in Resolution and was so impressed with her performance that he declared her “the ship of my choice.” So, while we may not have any artifacts from Endeavour as we originally thought, these scraps of wood form an 18th century wreck in Newport represent another possible connection with Captain James Cook.

Rob Doane

Curator, Naval War College Museum