Billing Boats 514 HMS Endeavour

BB514 HMS Endeavour manual

HMS Endeavour, also known as HM Bark Endeavour, was a British Royal 
Navy research vessel that Lieutenant James Cook commanded on his first 
voyage of discovery, to Australia and New Zealand, from 1769 to 1771.
She was launched in 1764 as the collier Earl of Pembroke, and the navy 
purchased her in 1768 for a scientific mission to the Pacific Ocean and 
to explore the seas for the surmised Terra Australis Incognita or "unknown 
southern land". The navy renamed and commissioned her as His Majesty's 
Bark the Endeavour. She departed Plymouth in August 1768, rounded Cape 
Horn, and reached Tahiti in time to observe the 1769 transit of Venus across
the Sun. She then set sail into the largely uncharted ocean to the south, 
stopping at the Pacific islands of Huahine, Borabora, and Raiatea to allow 
Cook to claim them for Great Britain. In September 1769, she anchored off 
New Zealand, the first European vessel to reach the islands since Abel Tasman's 
Heemskerck 127 years earlier.
In April 1770, Endeavour became the first ship to reach the east coast of Australia,
when Cook went ashore at what is now known as Botany Bay. Endeavour then 
sailed north along the Australian coast. She narrowly avoided disaster after 
running aground on the Great Barrier Reef, and Cook had to throw her guns 
overboard to lighten her. He then beached her on the mainland for seven weeks 
to permit rudimentary repairs to her hull. On 10 October 1770, she limped into 
port in Batavia (now named Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies for more substantial 
repairs, her crew sworn to secrecy about the lands they had visited. She resumed 
her westward journey on 26 December, rounded the Cape of Good Hope on 13 
March 1771, and reached the English port of Dover on 12 July, having been at 
sea for nearly three years.
Largely forgotten after her epic voyage, Endeavour spent the next three years 
shipping naval stores to the Falkland Islands. Renamed and sold into private 
hands in 1775, she briefly returned to naval service as a troop transport during 
the American War of Independence and was scuttled in a blockade of Narragansett 
Bay, Rhode Island, in 1778. Her wreck has not been precisely located, but relics, 
including six of her cannon and an anchor, are displayed at maritime museums 
worldwide. A replica of Endeavour was launched in 1994 and is berthed alongside 
the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney Harbour. The space shuttle 
Endeavour is named for the original ship.