7/9/2023 0 Comments Pinta ship wreckHere are some of the reasons why finding the remains of the First Fleet is so difficult: The conditions are lousy for ship preservation. While generations of school children have sung of the adventures of the " Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria too," the remains of Columbus' history-making First Fleet-as well as those of his subsequent three expeditions-remain undiscovered, despite decades of dedicated searching by archaeologists and shipwreck hunters alike. Instead, his crew sighted land in the Caribbean on October 12, 1492, setting in motion a series of events that would lead to the European colonization of the New World. "We can be excited about the fact that things look promising," she said, " we are not saying yet that it is her, it just looks very likely that it could be," she said.This year marks the 525th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's first Transatlantic expedition, a voyage that the Italian explorer expected would take him to Asia. RIMAP divers will try to make further dives to the wreck over winter, when the waters of Newport Harbor have better visibility, and then they hope to resume excavations next summer.Ībbass said archaeologists were focusing on the construction of wreck's wooden hull and traces of its later uses in the hope of confirming its identity as Cook's Endeavour. The recent underwater excavations by divers from RIMAP, the Australian National Maritime Museum and the Australian nonprofit Silentworld Foundation have recovered hundreds of artifacts from the wreck now thought to be the Endeavour and Lord Sandwich, including wood fragments, bits of leather, textiles, glass, ceramics, gun flints and ballast stones. That could mean that two of Cook's four round-the-world ships ended up at Newport, within a few miles of each other, she said. La Liberté, some historians now think, had formerly been the HMS Resolution, Cook's flagship during his second round-the-world voyage from 1772 to 1775, Abbass said. Wood recovered from that shipwreck toured the world as pieces of the Endeavour - a small piece even flew on the Apollo 15 moon mission in 1971, when the command module was named after Cook's ship. (Image credit: James Hunter/Copyright RIMAP 2019)įor many years, a different shipwreck at Newport was thought to be that of Cook's Endeavor - that of a ship named La Liberté, which had rotted beside the shore for many years, Abbass said. Identifying a shipwreckĪ dredge removing silt from the 18th-century shipwreck in Newport Harbor, now thought to be the wreck of Captain Cook's Endeavour. But the investigators are now more sure than ever that they had found the right shipwreck, she said. The search had proceeded slowly, due to the difficulty identifying the many shipwrecks detected in Newport Harbor, and because of limited funds. But they learned by 1999 that the ship in the scuttled fleet called the Lord Sandwich had previously been Cook's Endeavour, according to RIMAP. The British also used it as a prison ship off Newport during the war, and in 1778 it was one of at least 13 ships scuttled by the British in Newport Harbor to prevent an invasion by French warships - France was then an ally of the American revolutionaries.Ībbass said that RIMAP investigators first detected the wreck in 1993, when it was identified as one of the ships scuttled by the British. It was renamed the Lord Sandwich and used in 1776 to ferry British troops to fight in the American War of Independence. Related: The World's 10 Most Intrepid ExplorersĪfter its return to England, the Royal Navy sold the Endeavour, deeming it unfit for further service. While Cook concentrated on navigation and mapping, the expedition's naturalist, Joseph Banks, and eight other scientists recorded hundreds of unknown plant and animal species, including the first sighting by Europeans of a "kanguru." Its first scientific mission brought the ship to Tahiti in 1769, for Cook and crew to observe a transit of the planet Venus across the sun - an astronomical event that was also being recorded by other observers around the world.Ĭook and the Endeavour then explored the South Pacific and mapped the coast of New Zealand, before making the first European landing in Australia, at Botany Bay in 1770. James Cook commanded the Endeavour, a former coal carrier, on his first voyage around the world from 1768 to 1771. (Image credit: National Library of Australia) The Endeavour carried Captain Cook on his first voyage around the world from 1768 to 1771, but it was scuttled in Newport Harbor in 1778.
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