James Cook and HMB Endeavour

Related topics

Learning topicBritish seafaring

A curated collection of digital resources to support classroom learning about James Cook and the Endeavour voyage. 

These online resources provide sequenced learning activities using collection items and expert knowledge from the Maritime Museum. 

Cook's Voyages

Engage students with this interactive game. Players undertake scientific and navigational challenges while meeting with First Nations people in world-changing encounters. 

Screen of Cook's Voyages game
A boy holds an ipad showing a purple screen saying "Cook's Voyages" and an image of an aborigional girl.

Virtual Endeavour

Jump aboard and explore the life-sized replica of the HMB Endeavour in this virtual tour. Explore the sailing equipment on the upper decks or go below deck to see how the crew slept, ate and kept themselves amused during the voyage. 

screenshot of virtual endeavour tour showing the inside of a ships cabin belonging to Banks
Screenshot of endeavour deck

The Strange Big Canoe

(2:26 minutes)

The work, The Strange Big Canoe, created with the team from Ample Projects, is based on journal records and Indigenous histories that weave keynotes from HMB Endeavour’s voyage along the east coast into the perspectives of Indigenous communities along the shore and officers and crew on the ship. From first sightings of land and ship on 19 April 1770 at Tolylwarar in the south-east, a place Cook renamed Point Hicks, coastal communities watched as the ship made its way along the coastline - sending smoke signals ahead of it - as its commander Captain Cook watched, recorded and renamed lands from Kamay, Botany Bay to Bedhan Lag in the north on 22 August. There Cook planted the flag, renamed the island Possession Island, and sailed Endeavour north towards the spice islands, its hull full of plants and animals that had been collected. 
 

Australian National Maritime Museum

Discussion questions

The full story of HMB Endeavour

(7:20 minutes)

The tale of how a little coal-carrying ship, originally called the Earl of Pembroke, but better known as His Majesty's Bark Endeavour. Endeavour travelled around the world under the command of Lieutenant James Cook (Captain Cook), mapping many islands in the Pacific Ocean, New Zealand and along the East Coast of Australia, before ending up sunk at the bottom of Newport Harbour, Rhode Island, USA.

Australian National Maritime Museum

Discussion questions

deep dive

What happened next?

Find out how maritime archaeologists solved the mystery of what happened to HMB Endeavour

Mythbusting Cook

Read the Signals article ‘Mythbusting Cook’ and see if you can sort the fact from the fiction. 

Ropes mast rigging. Sails.
A portrait of Captain James Cook

True or false