Captain Cook’s missing ship discovered after 250 years

The remains of Captain Cook’s ship, the HMS Endeavour, have finally been located off the US coast, after sinking 250 years ago.  For two centuries this ship has been lost, but now the wreck has been found in Newport Harbour, Rhode Island. The finding of the ship was announced in a report by the Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) where the experts have identified the wreck as RI 2394 (Picture: MoL)

What was HMS Endeavour?

Captain James Cook was a British naval captain, navigator, and led the ship to be the first European vessel to reach eastern Australia between 1768 and 1771. It was also the first ship to circumnavigate New Zealand's main islands. But in 1775, it was sold and renamed the Lord Sandwich before it sank off the US coast in 1778 during the American War of Independence. This image shows a replica of the ship pulling into Sydney Harbour (Picture: Getty)

How long did it take to find HMS Endeavour?

Museum director Daryl Karp said: ‘This final report is the culmination of 25 years of detailed and meticulous archaeological study on this important vessel. It has involved underwater investigation in the US and extensive research in institutions across the globe. This final report marks our definitive statement on the project’ (Picture: MoL)

So, how did they find it?

The wreck was compared to historic plans for Cook’s ship revealing measurements aligned with those taken of a 1768 survey, where they discovered timbers whose placement corresponds exactly with the locations of Endeavour's main and fore masts. Wood analysis also revealed that the ship had European origins, which was consistent with records of the Endeavour being repaired in 1776 – that happened several years after the expedition(Picture: MoL)

However, the finding could be controversial, as the ANMM previously released a report identifying RI 2394 as the Endeavour but their research partners at the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project (RIMAP) pushed back.  The RIMAP said they were the lead organisation for the study, and that the finding was both 'premature' and a 'breach of contract'. However, the ANMM said it was not ruling out other candidate shipwreck sites (Picture: MoL)

Archaeologist James Hunter said: 'The Lord Sandwich was intentionally scuttled – it was sunk on purpose as a block ship. The chances of finding artifacts that would provide an immediate identification, such as a bell, were very unlikely. And that's because anything that was of value would have been stripped out of that ship before it was sunk. But what has been recovered up to this point is indicative of an 18th-century time frame’  (Picture: MoL)

ANMM archaeologist, Kieran Hosty, added: ‘We'll never find anything on this site that screams Endeavour. You'll never find a sign saying “Cook was here”. We will never see a ship's bell with Endeavour crossed out and Lord Sandwich inscribed on it. We've got a whole series of things pointing to RI 2394 as being HMS Endeavour. And so far we found lots of things that tick the box for it to be Endeavour and nothing on the site which says it's not’  (Picture: MoL)