The accurate location of the concluding resting position of Captain James Cook ’s HMSEndeavour , which was sunk off the sea-coast of Rhode Island 200 class ago , is debate one of maritime account ’s greatest secret . Now , after a25 - yeareffort to pinpoint its stiff among 13 sunken vessels , The Agereports that theEndeavourmight have lastly been name .
British explorerJames Cookleft England on theEndeavourin 1768 headed for the South Pacific . He and his work party became the first European expedition to map the entire coast ofNew Zealand , and later , the first to reach Australia ’s east sea-coast . Along the agency , they collected hundreds of antecedently unknownplant species , became the first Europeans to record akangaroo sighting , and gathered evidence that would help disprove the beingness of the long - hypothesise southern continent , Terra Australis , that hypothetically extend all the way up to the equator .
After that three - twelvemonth journey , Cook and his crew returned to England . Though Cook became alegend , theEndeavourdidn’t receive the star treatment . The British Royal Navy used it to ferry supply to and from the Falkland Islands for several years before betray it to a individual emptor . The ship was rename theLord Sandwich , and was finally put into Robert William Service delight German mercenary to fight on Britain ’s side in the American Revolution .
That ’s how the ship ended up in Rhode Island , where it was post as part of the Royal Navy ’s fleet in Newport Harbor and used as a prison house ship for captured American soldiers . When French reinforcement came to assist American revolutionaries in Rhode Island , the British decide to sink their ships rather than allow them to be captured , creating a blockade out of scuttle vessels to stymie the French from getting into the harbour . They go under 12 ecstasy vessels and set another on fire . Over the ensuing years , locals and French forces took equipment from the crash , but it ’s never been alone clean what happen to the clay .
The Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project begin to attempt to represent and key those remains starting in the early 1990s , and eventuallyfigured outthat theLord Sandwichwas the same ship as the HMSEndeavour . As the ship play a vital role in Australian history , the Australian National Maritime Museum then got involve with the project .
The two organizations haveannouncedthat they have frown the number of possible wrecks that could be theEndeavourfrom 14 to five — and perhaps down to just one — by scrutinise the sphere and measuring the wrecks against historic selective information about Cook ’s vessel . The researchers conceive the final resting post of the ship is located off the seashore of Goat Island in Narragansett Bay , but to be absolutely certain , they ’ll have to excavate the remains of the ship and probe its timber . The researchers hope to have that oeuvre done by the 250th anniversary of Cook ’s comer in Australia ’s Botany Bay — and his claiming of Australia as British soil — in 2020 .
And there may be a conflict over the remains . While the ship is considered a vital artefact of Australian history , the state of Rhode Island claim ownership of all of the deep-set ship in 1999 , and they are overseen by the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission .
[ h / tThe Age ]
