Possible discovery of Captain Cook's HMS Endeavour Off US Coast | Hacker News Reader

Possible discovery of Captain Cook's HMS Endeavour Off US Coast

theguardian.com

61 pointscurtis20 comments

I live in Northern England and a couple of years ago my wife and I visited the town of Staithes[0][1] on the the North Yorkshire coast. To get there from where we live you have to go around the North York Moors, either travelling east and north up the coast or north and east. If you take the latter route you can end up going through Cook's childhood home of Great Ayton. I had no idea Cook was from around there and that he lived in Staithes.

Staithes (along with Robin Hood's Bay[2] further south) is an amazing example of what English fishing ports were once like and I encourage everyone to visit if you have the opportunity.

[0] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Staithes

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staithes

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood%27s_Bay

Robin Hood's Bay is well worth the effort.

But that whole coastal strip is full of special places, from the bird colonies at Flamborough to gothic Whitby.

There's even an area called "Captain Cook's square" in Middlesbrough and a museum about him nearby

I'm a kiwi. The ship is on our 50c coins, but has always seemed almost mythical to me. This would be pretty damn cool.

kiwi too, and yes, this would be a cool find. This ship is such a significant part of the south pacifics history.

Also Kiwi. Amazing News...

Checking in from Dunedin ;)

Too bad it sounds like Endeavour will stay up there, but what an amazing find!

Aussie here, who is this Cook guy? /s

I recently had a short conversation with an American high school exchange student in Sydney who was annoyed about how much we are taught about Captain Cook and his voyages in Australian schools.

I tried to point out that Cook and the Endeavor were pretty damn significant to The United States also, but he was having none of it, and insisted that Cook was unimportant in US history. sigh.

Yeah, but finding Maui's canoe would be even cooler

Dutch here. Any idea why De Heemskerck from Abel Tasman is not on the 50c?

A few:

-Cultural relations between the UK and New Zealand have always been strong particularly back in 67 when decimalisation happened.

-Originally the 50c coin was going to be a design that paid tribute to NZ's farming industry but the designs were sent to an advisory committee for the UK Royal Mint who didn't like them. The new designs solicited in NZ resulted in the current 50c design.

-James Berry, the artist for the coins, was born in London before moving to NZ at around 20. Not that that makes him more anglocentric than a lot of the rest of the country (especially at the time).

-While Tasman was there first, his visit was brief and came to little result. Cook spent quite some time in NZ, mapped the entire coastline, returned later himself, and NZ was technically colonised shortly after.

-If you're concerned with the first humans to arrive there, they're celebrated on the 10c and 20c coin.

All in all, you might as well ask why Leif Erikson is so ignored in the US. The situations are fairly analogous.

Cook was also the first European to prove that NZ was in fact two separate islands.

> It was scuttled in 1778 along with 12 other ships to act as a blockade in the lead up to the battle of Rhode Island.

Why would sinking a ship act as a blockade? I can see if it was in shallow water, but I'm presuming these shipwrecks are in deeper water since they're only now being discovered.

Well, this is just a random guess, but as you can see here [0], the navigation channel where a linked article roughly located the wreck [1] seems to vary in depth between 50-120'. Looking at a similar style ship from the same timeframe [2], we see a main mast height taller than the water depth in that location. I would imagine if you scuttled the ships in a precise pattern, it would make it incredibly difficult for a ship under wind power to enter the port and avoid hitting the mast of a scuttled ship. I just happened to be in Newport this summer and learned about the area's history. The people who lived there were very accomplished seamen and I would not doubt their knowledge was put to good use in setting up that blockade.

[0] http://www.charts.noaa.gov/OnLineViewer/13223.shtml

[1] https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/hms-endeavour-fou...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Constitution

It's a little odd that the article says this:

> The site is located just off Goat Island, a small island in the Narragansett Bay.

...but the map in the article doesn't actually reflect this. The little red circle is southwest of Brenton Point, and it's a couple miles away from the vicinity of Goat Island. I guess whomever put the map together phoned it in...or decided there wasn't enough room on the map to place the circle more accurately.

Seems there wasn't much of an appreciation for items of historic significance in those days. Although data is sketchy, HMS Resolution used in Cook's second and third voyages of discovery apparently suffered a similar ignominious fate (from Wikipedia)

Her fate, by some cruel twist of historical irony, is as incredible as Endeavour's – she [Resolution] was sold to the French, rechristened La Liberte, and transformed into a whaler, then ended her days rotting in Newport Harbor. She settled to the bottom just a mile from Endeavour

And yet items of monarchical conspicuous consumption like the crown jewels are afforded meticulous preservation resources. /s

There will always be a selection effect here. You need hindsight to know with any accuracy what is old junk, vs. what is of historical interest.

I read this as Captain Hook the first time...

Not sure why this is downvoted. I find it humourous as I did as well.

This is exactly what I read and I was actually confused why people were suddenly talking of a certain Captain Cook ('who is this guy?!') in this thread

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