HMS Endeavour
HMS Endeavour
* 1764 - 1778 * Royal Navy, Plymouth, Great Britain *
The HMS Endeavor, also known as the “HM Bark Endeavor”, was built by Thomas Fishburn Whitby for the Royal Navy of England as a “Bark” type ship with over 368 tons burthen, a length of 106 feet, a beam of over 29 feet, as a full rigged ship designed for scientific research missions. It possesses over 3,321 square yards of sail. It has the ability to clock over 8 knots maxium (13-15 km/hour). She could house a crew of 94 which included 71 ship’s company, 12 Royal Marines, 11 civilians, and armament. She was first launched in June of 1764 as the collier “Earl of Pembroke”. Purchased by the Navy in March of 1768 and commissioned a few months later as “His Majesty’s Bark the Endeavor” for a scientific mission to the Pacific exploring the seas for the legendary “Terra Australis Incognita” or “Unknown Great Southern Land”. She was commanded by the infamous Lieutenant Captain James Cook who took her on a journey for the Westerner discovery of Australia and New Zealand from 1769 until 1771. She set sail from Plymouth in August 1768, rounding Cape Horn, onwards to Tahiti for arrival in 1769 to chart and observe the transit of Venus across the sun so scientists could measure the distance from the Earth to the Sun. She explored the South Seas and granted Cook the privilege to discover, chart, and claim for England the Pacific Islands of Huahine, Raiatea, and Borbora. In 1770 she became the first seagoing vessel to reach the East coast of Australia at Botany Bay. From there she sailed north along the coast, beaching on the Great Barrier Reef only later to beach n the mainland along the Endeavor River. Seven weeks of repairs and refitting, she was back to sail in October 1770 onwards to Batavia and back to England. She arrived in July that year. She was then used for the next three years shipping Navy stores to the Falkland Islands. She was officially de-commissioned in September 1774 and marked “Out of Service” in March 1775. She was sold into private hands in 1775 and used for naval service as a troop transport during the American Revolutionary War. The “HMS Endeavor” was renamed the “Lord Sandwich” in 1776. She had as least one commercial voyage to the Archangel in Russia. It became “scuttled” in 1778 in the Narragansett Bay outside of Newport, Rhode Island, North America where it sank to an unknown location and depth. Some relics from the wreck have been uncovered, including the cannons and anchor. A 1991 Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project known as RIMAP researched the identity of ten transports sunk as part of the Narragansett Bay blockade and confirmed the Endeavor had been renamed “Lord Sandwich” and scuttled to sunk in the Bay. She has been replicaed as the HMB Endeavor, launched in 1994 and berthed at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney, Australia. The replica has since done two circumnavigations of the World and is now embarking upon its 2011 circumnavigation of Australia.
Originally published at Technogypsie.com Reviews