“Since 1999, we have surveyed several 18th-century shipwrecks in a two-square-mile area where we suspected the Endeavor sank,” said Kevin Sumption, director of the State Maritime Museum on Thursday. Based on archaeological evidence, he was convinced that the wreck now defined was Cook’s ship.
After two centuries at the bottom of the seabed, only about 15 percent of the wreck remains intact, according to the museum. “We are now focused on what can be done to protect and preserve them,” Sumption told reporters.
US partners are skeptical
However, the US research partners from the Rhode Island Project for Marine Archeology (RIMAP) described the assignment of the wreck as premature. The announcement by Sumption was a “breach of contract”. The conclusion as to whether it really is the “Endeavour” must be made through a “scientific process” and not through “Australian feelings”, explained Rimap.
The research team had already announced in 2018 that they might have located the wreck of the “Endeavour”. James Cook had made his first voyage of discovery with the ship from 1768 to 1771 and explored the southwestern Pacific. He sailed from England to Tahiti and then to New Zealand before reaching Australia in 1770.
The ship was later used by the British Army and renamed “Lord Sandwich”. It sank in August 1778 in Newport Harbour.