Wreck of Endeavour: British explorer James Cook’s famed ship believed found in US
- Experts identified what’s left of British explorer James Cook’s ship HMS Endeavour in Newport Harbor, Rhode Island
- Cook sailed the ship around the South Pacific in a pioneering voyage before landing on the east coast of Australia in 1770
Australian maritime experts on Thursday said they believed they’d found the wreck of a historically significant British ship after it was scuttled in the United States more than 200 years ago.
But archaeologists in the US quickly countered by saying the findings were premature and a breach of contract in their joint research.
For 22 years, maritime archaeologists have been investigating several ancient shipwrecks in a roughly 5 sq km area of Newport Harbor, Rhode Island. That is where James Cook’s HMS Endeavour was believed to have been deliberately sunk by the British during the American Revolution.
Cook, an explorer and a captain in the British Royal Navy, had earlier sailed the ship around the South Pacific in a pioneering voyage before landing on the east coast of Australia in 1770.
Kevin Sumption, the chief executive of the Australian National Maritime Museum, on Thursday morning held a news conference in Sydney after alerting media that he would be making “a major historic maritime announcement”.
Sumption said archaeologists were convinced they had found the wreck of the Endeavour after matching structural details and the shape of the remains to those on original plans.
“I am satisfied that this is the final resting place of one of the most important and contentious vessels in Australia’s maritime history,” Sumption said.