HMS Endeavour

**HMS _Endeavour***, also known as **HM Bark _Endeavour***, was a British Royal Navy ship commanded by Lieutenant James Cook on his first voyage of discovery to Australia and New Zealand from 1769 to 1771.

The ship was launched in 1764 as the coal carrying ship _Earl of Pembroke_. She was bought by the Navy in 1768 for a scientific mission to the  Pacific Ocean. She was also to search for the unknown southern land, _Terra Australis Incognita_. Renamed as _His Majesty's Bark the Endeavour_, she left Plymouth in August 1768. After sailing around Cape Horn she reached Tahiti to see 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 which Cook claimed 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 ran into the Great Barrier Reef near Cape Tribulation. The crew were able to get the ship onto a beach on the mainland. This is now the site of the town of Cooktown. They stayed for seven weeks so that basic repairs could be made to her hull. On 10 October 1770, she limped into port in Batavia in the Dutch East Indies for more substantial repairs. She left 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.

The _Endeavour_ spent the next three years shipping Navy stores to the Falkland Islands. She was renamed and sold in 1775, but was used as a troop transport during the American Revolutionary War. She sank in a blockade of Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island in 1778. Her wreck has not been found, but relics, including six of her cannons and an anchor, are displayed at maritime museums worldwide. A full size working copy of _Endeavour_ was launched in 1994 and is berthed alongside the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney Harbour.

## Infobox (ship begin)


## Infobox (ship image)

- **ship image**: HMS Endeavour off the coast of New Holland, by Samuel Atkins c.1794.jpg
- **ship caption**: _HMS Endeavour off the coast of New Holland_
by Samuel Atkins c. 1794


## Infobox (ship career)

- **ship country**: Great Britain
- **ship flag**:
- **ship name**: _Endeavour_
- **ship operator**: Thomas Millner, Royal Navy, Mather & Co., J. Mather
- **ship builder**: Thomas Fishburn, Whitby
- **ship launched**: June 1764
- **ship acquired**: 28 March 1768 as _Earl of Pembroke_
- **ship commissioned**: 26 May 1768
- **ship decommissioned**: September 1774
- **ship out of service**: March 1775, sold
- **ship renamed**: _Lord Sandwich_, February 1776
- **ship homeport**: Plymouth, United Kingdom
- **ship fate**: Scuttled, Newport, Rhode Island, 1778


## Infobox (ship characteristics)

- **ship class**: Barque, Bark
- **ship tons burthen**: 366 <small></small> (Builder's Old Measurement, bm)
- **ship sail plan**: *Full rigged ship
*  of sail
- **ship speed**: maximum
- **ship boats**: yawl, Pinnace (ship's boat), pinnace, longboat, two skiffs
- **ship complement**: *94, comprising:
** 71 ship's company
** 12 marines
** 11 civilians
- **ship armament**: 10 Naval artillery in the Age of Sail, 4-pdrs, 12 swivel guns