HMS Endeavour

HMS Endeavour, also known as HM Bark Endeavour, was the Royal Navy research ship commanded by Lieutenant James Cook on his voyage of discovery to New Zealand and Australia from 1768 to 1771.

She was launched in 1764 as a collier, a cargo ship built to carry coal. She was 29.77 m long and 8.89 m wide. The Royal Navy bought her in 1768 for a voyage in search of Terra Australis, the “unknown southern land” shown on maps from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, and renamed her His Majesty’s Bark Endeavour.

The voyage

She left Plymouth in August 1768, rounded Cape Horn and reached Tahiti in 1769 in time to observe the transit of Venus across the face of the Sun. Cook went on to Huahine, Bora Bora and Raiatea, and reached New Zealand in October 1769. She was the first European ship to visit since Abel Tasman’s voyage 127 years earlier.

In April 1770 she reached the east coast of Australia at Botany Bay, the first European ship to do so. Sailing north along the coast she ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef. Cook had her guns thrown overboard to lighten her, then beached her on the mainland for seven weeks of repairs.

On 10 October 1770 she reached Batavia in the Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta) for a major refit. She sailed west on 26 December, rounded the Cape of Good Hope on 13 March 1771 and reached Dover on 12 July 1771, after nearly three years at sea.

For the next three years she made voyages to the Falkland Islands. In 1775 she was sold to a private owner, who renamed her Lord Sandwich.

About the model

Denis’s model is fully rigged with partly furled sails and flies the red ensign at the stern.