Imagine the hoopla if America discovered the wreck of the Mayflower. Consider the years of hoopla since the wreck of the Titanic was discovered. Yet, discovery of similar historical significance to both Australia and New Zealand is being almost completely ignored by our local mainstream media: the discovery of the wreck of the Endeavour.
After 250 years, the long-lost ship of Captain James Cook, HMS Endeavour, has finally been discovered off the coast of Newport Harbour, Rhode Island. Originally the first European vessel to reach eastern Australia (1768-1771), it was later renamed Lord Sandwich and sank during the American War of Independence in 1778.
The Australian National Maritime Museum confirmed the find after 25 years of underwater exploration and archaeological research, identifying the wreck as RI 2394 based on matching dimensions from Cook's 1768 survey.
This should be headline news. Yet, our MSM, in thrall to the hateful, resentful, spiteful left, are almost completely ignoring it. We should be thankful, I suppose, that’s it’s safely underwater, where the hooting barbarian hordes of the left can’t get at it. Nothing, after all, arouses the jealous rage of the small and insignificant more than a reminder of the astonishing achievements of greater men than they’ll ever be.
In the pursuit of science, the working-class-born Cook spent years circumnavigating the globe multiple times, in often uncharted waters, in a ship just 30 metres long – less than two articulated buses put together – and nine metres wide. As well as revolutionising multiple fields of science and naval technology, Cook not only charted the east coast of Australia in astonishing detail, and ended the centuries-long isolation of New Zealand, but came within just over 100 kilometres of being the first human being to sight the Antarctic continent.
At the centre of Cook’s towering achievements as a navigator, cartographer, explorer, and Enlightenment pioneer, is his famous ship, the Endeavour.
Researchers were able to confirm that it was indeed Cook’s lost ship by comparing the wreckage with the vessel’s historic plans, finding that the placement of certain timbers was a dead ringer for the locations of its main and fore masts in the outline.
Meanwhile, the wreck’s measurements matched those taken during a 1768 survey of the Endeavour.
“The size of all the timber scantlings are almost identical to Endeavour, and I’m talking within millimetres – not inches, but millimetres,” declared Australian National Maritime Museum archaeologist Kieran Hosty. “The stem scarf is identical, absolutely identical.”
He added, “This stem scarf is also a very unique feature – we’ve gone through a whole bunch of 18th-century ship’s plans, and we can’t find anything else like it.”
So, how did the Endeavour end up at the bottom of an American harbour?
While Cook’s returned from his first voyage – the only one in which he sailed the Endeavour – to fame and glory, his ship was largely forgotten. After all, it had begun its life as a sturdy but unremarkable coal-hauler (as it happened, working the very port of Whitby where Cook had served his apprenticeship on coal transports some two decades earlier). Within a week of Cook’s triumphant return to England, the Endeavour was refitted as a naval transport, making three return voyages to the Falkland Islands.
After a brief commercial career, the ship, renamed Lord Sandwich 2 and by now in poor repair, was sold to the Royal Navy as a troop transport for the American War of Independence. In August 1776, Endeavour/Lord Sandwich 2 was anchored with other ships at Sandy Hook, Connecticut. In further remarkable coincidences, the assembled ships included Resolution, from Cook’s second and third voyages and HMS Siren, captained by Tobias Furneaux, who commanded Adventure on Cook’s second voyage (during which he mapped the east coast of Tasmania).
In 1778, to prevent a French fleet sailing into the harbour, a fleet that included Endeavour was scuttled at the mouth of Newport Harbour. On 4 August 1778, the Royal Navy sunk the Endeavour, along with 13 other ships.
