HMS Endeavour

HMS Endeavour

HMS Endeavour was a British Royal Navy research vessel that Lieutenant James Cook commanded to Australia and New Zealand. She was launched in 1764 as the collier Earl of Pembroke, with the Navy purchasing her in 1768 for a scientific mission to the Pacific Ocean. In September 1769, she anchored off New Zealand, becoming the first European vessel to reach the islands since Abel Tasman’s Heemskerck 127 years earlier. In April 1770, she became the first. European ship to reached the east coast of Australia, with Cook going ashore at what is now known as Botany Bay. She narrowly avoided disaster after running aground on the Great Barrier Reef, and Cook had to throw her guns overboard to lighten her

About HMS Endeavour in brief

Summary HMS EndeavourHMS Endeavour was a British Royal Navy research vessel that Lieutenant James Cook commanded to Australia and New Zealand. She was launched in 1764 as the collier Earl of Pembroke, with the Navy purchasing her in 1768 for a scientific mission to the Pacific Ocean and to explore the seas for the surmised Terra Australis Incognita. In September 1769, she anchored off New Zealand, becoming the first European vessel to reach the islands since Abel Tasman’s Heemskerck 127 years earlier. In April 1770, she became the first. European ship to reached the east coast of Australia, with Cook going ashore at what is now known as Botany Bay. She narrowly avoided disaster after running aground on the Great Barrier Reef, and Cook had to throw her guns overboard to lighten her. The ship was largely forgotten after her epic Pacific voyage, spending the next three years hauling troops and cargo to and from the Falkland Islands. Rehired as a British troop transport during the American War of Independence, she was finally scuttled in a blockade of Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island in 1778. A replica of the ship is berthed alongside the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney Harbour. The NASA Space Shuttle Endeavor was named after this ship, as was the command module of Apollo 15, which took a small piece of wood from Cook’s ship into space, and the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule C206 was christened Endesavour during Demo-2.

The wreck has not been precisely located but is thought to be one of a cluster of five in Newport Harbor. Relics from Endeour are displayed at maritime museums worldwide, including an anchor and six of her cannon, and a replica of her is on display at the National Maritime museum in Sydney, Australia. She is also depicted on the New Zealand fifty-cent coin, and her name is featured on a New Zealand commemorative coin of the same name. Her hull, internal floors, and futtocks were built from traditional white oak, her keel and stern from elm and fir. There is uncertainty about the height of her ship, but surviving diagrams of the vessel depict the main and foremast standing masts only, which would produce an oddly truncated mast of 9 feet 9 inches. Late 20th-century research suggested the mast may be a full 9 feet shorter than the naval standards of the day, but this has been accepted as accepted by the military as a full 20th century research suggestion. If correct, this would produce a shorter mast than the standard mast of a full day of the 20th century, which has the standard length of 69 and 65 feet, respectively from an annotation on one surviving plan on Greenwich NMM ZAZ94, which records these lengths as 29 mizzen and 29 yards (69.5 feet and 65ft) The ship has been renamed Lord Sandwich in 1775 after being sold into private hands, and used to transport timber from the Baltic.