25 Facts About HMS Endeavour

HMS Endeavour was a British Royal Navy research vessel that Lieutenant James Cook commanded to Australia and New Zealand on his first voyage of discovery from 1768 to 1771.

HMS Endeavour was launched in 1764 as the collier Earl of Pembroke, with the Navy purchasing 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".

HMS Endeavour then set sail into the largely uncharted ocean to the south, stopping at the islands of Huahine, Bora Bora, and Raiatea west of Tahiti to allow Cook to claim them for Great Britain.

HMS Endeavour narrowly avoided disaster after running aground on the Great Barrier Reef, and Cook had to throw her guns overboard to lighten her.

HMS Endeavour was beached on the Australian mainland for seven weeks to permit rudimentary repairs to her hull.

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HMS Endeavour was renamed in 1775 after being sold into private hands, and used to transport timber from the Baltic.

Relics from HMS Endeavour are displayed at maritime museums worldwide, including an anchor and six of her cannon.

The NASA Space Shuttle HMS Endeavour was named after this ship, as was the command module of Apollo 15, which took a small piece of wood from Cook's ship into space, and the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule C206 was christened HMS Endeavour during Demo-2.

HMS Endeavour was a type known locally as the 'Whitby Cat'.

HMS Endeavour was ship-rigged and sturdily built with a broad, flat bow, a square stern, and a long box-like body with a deep hold.

Attempts to round the Cape over the next two days were unsuccessful, and HMS Endeavour was repeatedly driven back by wind, rain and contrary tides.

HMS Endeavour spent the next six months sailing close to shore, while Cook mapped the coastline and concluded that New Zealand comprised two large islands and was not the hoped-for Terra Australis.

The reef HMS Endeavour had struck rose so steeply from the seabed that although the ship was hard aground, Cook measured depths up to 70 feet less than one ship's length away.

HMS Endeavour was entrusted with supervising the task, sewing bits of oakum and wool into an old sail, which was then drawn under the ship to allow water pressure to force it into the hole in the hull.

HMS Endeavour then resumed her course northward and parallel to the reef, the crew looking for a safe harbour in which to make repairs.

HMS Endeavour grounded briefly on a sand spit but was refloated an hour later and warped into the river proper by early afternoon.

HMS Endeavour then resumed her voyage westward along the coast, picking a path through intermittent shoals and reefs with the help of the pinnace, which was rowed ahead to test the water depth.

Repairs and replenishment were completed by Christmas Day 1770, and the next day HMS Endeavour weighed anchor and set sail westward towards the Indian Ocean.

HMS Endeavour was a collapsible vessel and was no sooner built than taken apart, and the pieces were stowed in Endeavour.

In 1999 RIMAP discovered documents in the Public Record Office in London confirming that HMS Endeavour had been renamed Lord Sandwich, had served as a troop transport to North America, and had been scuttled at Newport as part of the 1778 fleet of transports.

In 1937, a small part of HMS Endeavour keel was given to the Australian Government by philanthropist Charles Wakefield in his capacity as president of the Admiral Arthur Phillip Memorial.

Apollo 15's command and service module CSM-112 was given the call sign HMS Endeavour; astronaut David Scott explained the choice of the name on the grounds that its captain, Cook, had commanded the first purely scientific sea voyage, and Apollo 15 was the first lunar landing mission on which there was a heavy emphasis on science.

Replica HMS Endeavour visited various European ports before undertaking her final ocean voyage from Whitehaven to Sydney Harbour on 8 November 2004.

Second full-size replica of HMS Endeavour was berthed on the River Tees in Stockton-on-Tees before being moved to Whitby.

At Whitby the "Bark HMS Endeavour Whitby" is a scaled-down replica of the original ship.

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