When the Australian National Maritime Museum claimed last week that the wreck of Captain James Cook’s famed ship Endeavour had been positively identified at last, it sparked a backlash from American archaeologists who have been studying the Newport harbour site for the past 22 years, as reported on Divernet on 3 February.
“There has been no indisputable data found to prove the site is that iconic vessel,” said the woman leading the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project, its executive director Dr Kathy Abbass. She described the announcement by museum CEO Kevin Sumption not only as premature but a “breach of contract”. So what is the missing link at the heart of the dispute?
A possible answer has come from Australian biographer Rob Mundle, who has written a number of books about the British sea captain and explorer famed for his landings in Australia and New Zealand in the 1770s.
Mundle has told ABC Radio National that the key to identifying the wreck lies in a “unique” design of brick that was used to retain heat in Endeavour’s galley.
The author said that he agreed with Dr Abbass, who had declared that any conclusions should be “driven by proper scientific process and not Australian emotions or politics”.
“If someone came up with one of those bricks, which you’d expect they would be able to, then I think that would be enough… to confirm that it is Endeavour,” he told the broadcaster. “I think that if both sides don’t come out as one, then we ain’t got anything to be too excited about at the moment.
“There are certain elements there that would suggest that it’s Endeavour, and there’s nothing really to say that it's not Endeavour.”
Following the broadside from Dr Abbass, the Australian museum’s own maritime archaeologists Kieran Hosty and Dr James Hunter weighed into the Cook shipwreck dispute.
“Anything that was of value would have been stripped out of that ship before it was sunk,” said diver Dr Hunter, tasked since 2017 with 3D photogrammetry of the wreck and referring to the fact that the vessel had been deliberately sunk as a blockship.
He also stressed that underwater visibility in Newport harbour remained a constant problem for the archaeological divers, typically ranging from zero to 1m.
“We will never find anything on this site that screams Endeavour,” said Hosty. “We will never find a sign saying ‘Cook was here’. We will never see a ship’s bell with Endeavour crossed out and Lord Sandwich [the ship’s name when it sank in 1778] inscribed on it.
“We call on the ‘preponderance of evidence’, where we've got a whole series of things that tie into Endeavour. And so far, we've found lots of things that tick the boxes for it to be the Endeavour and nothing on the site which says it's not.” Watch their new video about the wreck investigations.
