A world tour by the Australian replica of Capt. James Cook’s Endeavour will include stops in several U.S. ports this summer. The 109-foot wooden ship, built in 1993 and based in Fremantle, Western Australia, has been calling on southeastern U.S. ports since April and will continue north to New England and Canada through October.
Endeavour is a replica of the vessel Cook commanded on his first voyage of exploration in the South Pacific, which departed Plymouth in 1768 and returned nearly three years later in 1771, having completed a circumnavigation.
Accompanied by the esteemed naturalist Joseph Banks, Cook was instructed to accomplish two tasks: Record the predicted transit of Venus across the sun from Tahiti and explore the possible existence of a large and fertile continent in the Southern Hemisphere, what was being called Terra Australis Incognita.
Cook was somewhat successful with both efforts (he never found Antarctica on this expedition). The voyage discovered and thoroughly charted New Zealand. Cook then found Australia’s southeast coast by accident when his vessel was diverted by foul weather. Sailing north, Endeavour was nearly lost when the ship hit one of the Great Barrier Reef’s many coral heads. The expedition continued around what is now Cape York (Australia’s northernmost cape), west through the Torres Strait and into Indonesia before continuing around the Cape of Good Hope.
The replica will be open to the public for dockside tours.
Endeavour’s, East Coast schedule:
New York, June 27 – July 5
Norwalk, Conn., July 11 – 19
Newport, R.I., July 25 – Aug. 9
Boston, Aug. 15 – 23
New Bedford, Mass., Aug. 29 – Sept. 6
Portsmouth, N.H., Sept 12 – 20
Bath, Maine, Sept. 26 – Oct. 4
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Oct. 10 – 18
