Tracing Endeavour

In the late 1700s, the small seaside village of Whitby was known as a 'nursery' for mariners, where expert shipbuilders and the most competent seafarers completed their apprenticeships. This centre for commercial trade bred colliers—sturdy ships capable of carrying heavy loads, including coal, across the Baltic Sea and beyond. They were steady workhorses that could be relied upon. Their solid, flat-floored hulls were adept in navigating shallow harbours and estuaries. Earl of Pembroke was one such vessel, built by Thomas Fishburn for Thomas Milner in 1764. One of its rare and distinguishing features was a 'deadwood' or 'rider' keelson that ran along the inside bottom of the hull. This reinforcing centreline timber prevented the vessel from breaking its back when loading or unloading cargo in shallow tidal waters. The son of a Yorkshire farmer learned how to sail on ships such as these. His name was James Cook. 

 The Endeavour voyage was, on the surface, a scientific mission. Lieutenant Cook’s first orders were to set sail for Tahiti, a tiny island in the South Pacific that he skilfully steered a course to by the moon and the stars. The crew arrived right on time to observe the Transit of Venus—a once in a lifetime celestial event that would allow astronomers to calculate the distance from the earth to the sun and the size of the solar system for the first time. It was there that Cook opened a sealed packet, containing secret orders to find Terra Australis Incognita, or the ‘unknown southern land' that was thought to exist but yet to be confirmed. 

"You are therefore in Pursuance of His Majesty’s Pleasure hereby requir’d [sic] and directed to put to Sea with the Bark you Command so soon as the Observation of the Transit of the Planet Venus shall be finished and observe the following instructions. 

You are to proceed to the Southward in order to make discovery of the Continent above-mentioned until you arrive in the latitude of 40° unless you sooner fall in with it."

It was this latter mission that led to Cook’s mapping of the eastern coast of Australia, a land long occupied by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples with their own distinct languages, cultures, and knowledge—passed on through songlines embedded in Country and waters. But Cook had his instructions from the Admiralty, which referred to Australia’s Indigenous peoples in the language of the day:

You are [...] to observe the Genius, Temper, Disposition and Number of the

Natives, if there be any, and endeavour by all proper means to cultivate Friendship and Alliance with them…

You are also with the Consent of the Natives to take Possession of Convenient Situations in the Country in the Name of the King of Great Britain. Or, if you find the Country uninhabited take Possession for his Majesty by setting up Proper Marks and Inscriptions, as first discoverers and possessors.

Consent to enter Aboriginal lands or to claim possession was never given. As they travelled along the east coast, Cook and his men saw evidence of the peoples of many Aboriginal nations. His journals noted many sightings of smoke and signal fires. While transiting north off the present-day coast of Queensland, Endeavour struck upon the Great Barrier Reef. There is no way Cook could have known the extent of this vast network of coral reefs and shallow shoals and it nearly spelled the end of the voyage. The crew strived frantically for a day and a night to avoid sinking while the ship took on water. Among the first items thrown overboard were heavy cannons, followed by iron ballast and nonessential provisions. The arduous work paid off. Cook and his crew spent several weeks living on the lands of the Guugu Yimithirr people while the damage to Endeavour was assessed. The Whitby collier was built strong enough to withstand such unpredictable occurrences and conditions. But perhaps if Endeavour were another type of vessel, the fate of Cook and his crew, and the history of Australia, would be much different. 

With the hardy Endeavour temporarily patched up, it was repaired in Batavia (modern day Jakarta), Indonesia, before sailing back to England––victorious. Cook went on to lead two more world-spanning voyages in newly fitted-out ships, like HMS Resolution. But Endeavour was redirected, ferrying troops and military supplies to British Army regiments stationed in the Falkland Islands. By 7 March 1775, the worn-out bark was sold for a sum of £645 and returned to the routine trade routes of a merchant collier operating in the North Sea. As to its fate? For many years, the popular consensus was that Endeavour had been purchased by French merchants for use as a whaling vessel and given yet another name—La Liberté. 

“She arrived in Newport and lay alongside one of the wharves for some months, and then, having at last received a cargo, she ran aground in trying to leave the harbour, and proving on survey to be in a very bad condition, she was allowed to remain where she was and drop to pieces."

It was far from a dignified ending, but there the story settled. The timbers that could be salvaged were used to build a new whaler—Wareham. Artefacts such as the carved crown were taken from the stern for souvenirs, and pieces of the vessel remain in the hands of collectors around the world today. A parking lot was built on reclaimed land, where the wreck was likely located, and that seemed to close the chapter on this extraordinary ship’s history. 

That is, until 1997, when two Australian historians, Mike Connell and Des Liddy, uncovered clues in the 1776 edition of Lloyds Register of Shipping that Endeavour was, in fact, renamed Lord Sandwich and that La Liberté was Cook’s other ship, Resolution. Hot on the trail was Dr Kathy Abbass from RIMAP, who recalls:

When the Connell-Liddy article arrived at the RIMAP office in early 1998, it did not take much imagination to speculate that the Lord Sandwich transport, used as a prison ship and possibly sunk in Newport in 1778, was the same vessel. This meant that the local lore about the loss of Endeavour in Newport was correct, but that the story had confused two vessels lost fifteen years apart and in different parts of the harbour.

During a visit to the United Kingdom, Dr Abbass found evidence at the Public Records Office in Kew that the Lord Sandwich sunk in Newport Harbor in 1778 was formerly HMB Endeavour.

The image above shows the French fleet under Comte d’Estaing arriving at Newport Harbor on 8 August 1778. The smoke at image right near the letter ‘A’ was caused by the British intentionally burning some of their warships to prevent their capture. Image credit: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.

Lord Sandwich aided the British in the American War of Independence by transporting German mercenary troops from Europe to North America, and for a time served as a prison ship in Newport Harbor, holding American patriots captured during the conflict. Once the British learned a superior fleet sent by the French (who had recently joined the conflict on the side of the Americans) was approaching Rhode Island, they blocked access to Newport by intentionally sinking ships on the north, south and west sides of Goat Island. Among them was Lord Sandwich. A technique, known as ‘scuttling’, was used to carefully sink a ship so that it wouldn’t capsize, but rather land on the seabed upright, with its masts still standing vertically in order to block the passage of enemy ships. One of the museum's maritime archaeologists, Dr James Hunter, describes the complicated process:

“I just imagine some poor soul having to go down there in the hold of the ship. It would be pitch-black, he’d be given a hammer and a chisel and be told, ‘go and knock a couple of holes in this vessel, and by the way, you’d better run really quick because the water's going to flood in’. I can just imagine it. Three, three and a half inches, about a hundred millimetres of planking, they had to chop through quickly, not an easy task. And it would have been a group of them doing it. They would have been yelling back and forth – ‘how far are you in?’ And you have to remember in the hold of the ship, there's only one or two ways out and they have to scramble over the ballast, negotiate the timbers of the ship. I just imagine trying to get out on the ladder—four or five guys, all scrambling as the water was coming in, and doing everything by candle or lamp light.” 

Ships were scuttled this way with the intention of later recovering them for reuse; however, after the French retreated the British decided to leave many of the scuttled ships behind, including Lord Sandwich, as it was considered no longer fit for service, or worth the effort to re-float.