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HMB Endeavor (1768)

HMB Endeavour (1768) History

The HMS Endeavour was a British Royal Naval research ship commanded by Lieutenant James Cook that made her maiden voyage to Australia and New Zealand from 1768 to 1771.

She was launched in 1764 as Earl of Collier of Pembroke and purchased by the Navy in 1768 for scientific missions to the Pacific to explore the dubious Terra Australis Incognita or "Unknown Lands of the South". In August 1768, she was appointed as His Majesty's Bark Endeavour, leaving Plymouth, rounding Cape Horn and arriving in Tahiti in time to observe the passage of Venus across the Sun in 1769. She then sailed into the almost unknown ocean to the south, stopping at the islands of Hua Hin, Bora Bora and Layatai west of Tahiti, waiting for Cook to claim British sovereignty.

She dropped anchor off New Zealand in September 1769, becoming the first European ship to reach the islands since the Abel Tasman's Heemskerck 127 years earlier.

In April 1770, the Endeavour became the first European ship to reach the east coast of Australia, with the Cook disembarking in what is now Botany Bay. Endeavour then sailed north along the Australian coast. She narrowly avoided disaster after she ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef and Cook had to drop her gun to reduce her weight.

Endeavour was stranded on the Australian mainland for seven weeks for basic repairs to her hull. In October 1770, she continued her voyage, limping into the port of Batavia, her crew vowing to keep the countries she visited a secret.

Continuing west from Batavia, the Endeavour rounded the Cape of Good Hope on March 13, 1771, and arrived at the English port of Dover on July 12 after nearly three years at sea.

The ship was largely forgotten after its voyage in the Pacific and spent the next three years carrying troops and cargo to and from the Falklands. It was privately renamed after being sold in 1775 and was used to transport timber from the Baltic Sea. In 1778, she was rehired as a British warship during the American Revolution and eventually sank in the blockade of Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island.

Historical evidence suggests the ship sank north of Goat Island in Newport Harbor along with four other British transports.

Relics of the Endeavour are displayed in maritime museums around the world, including an anchor and her six cannons. A replica of the Endeavour was launched in 1994 and moored next to the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney Harbour.

NASA's space shuttle Endeavour was named after the spacecraft, the Apollo 15 command module launched a small piece of wood from Cook's spacecraft, and the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule C206 was named Endeavour during Demo-2. The ship also appears on the New Zealand 50 cent coin.