Hmb Endeavour

H.M.S. (sometimes H.M.Barque) Endeavour was James Cook’s vessel on his first voyage of discovery between 1768 and 1771.

She was originally built as a “Whitby cat” – a stout and strong, bluff-bowed, flat bottomed, shallow draft vessel, designed to carry coal into the Baltic Sea from the north-east of England and return with timber for the mines and shipbuilding industries. She was built some time before 1768, originally named Earl of Pembroke, and renamed Endeavour when purchased by the Admiralty. She was of a design well known and respected by Cook from his time in the coal trade.

She was barque rigged - length 32.3m x beam 9.9m (106’ x 29.25’) tonnage 368. She had a double wooden hull (an extra skin having been stipulated by Cook) and an added lower deck. Contemporary paintings usually show her with a lug topsail on her mizzen. On her departure from Plymouth on August 26, 1768, she had on board a total of 100 men – officers and crew, marines and supernumeries that included an astronomer, naturalists and artists.

The Endeavour sailed alone the length of the Atlantic around Cape Horn, crossed the Pacific to what is now French Polynesia, wandered the empty tracts of the south Pacific seeking the “Great South Land” as far as 40 degrees south, circumnavigated and charted both islands of New Zealand crossed the Tasman Sea to the south-east point of the Australian mainland before traversing the whole length of the east coast of the continent; passed through Torres Strait and into waters familiar through Dutch charts. From Batavia in Java she sailed across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope and back to England; arriving on July 13, 1771.

The Endeavour did all that was expected of her. Even when holed in the Great Barrier Reef the design enabled her to be beached and repaired with the minimum of drama. Cook wrote that his ship's “good qualities enabled me to remain in the South Sea more than anyone has been able able to do before.”

Cook's vessel for his later voyages of exploration – Resolution – was of the same design.

See also[edit]

Sailing ship types: Glossary

References[edit]

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History Vol 1 p630