A Waste of Money !

There seems to be a rising tide of excitement in Australia at the news that Captain Cook's famous ship Endeavour has finally been discovered.   Cook sailed her to Australia in 1770 and it seems that her remains are resting on the muddy bottom of Rhode Island in America.  She has been there for 230 years and because she was a timber ship there will be very little of her still recognisable.

Ships of that vintage had a working life of only a few years.  Worm infestation rotted their timbers and many ended up as prison hulks on the banks of the river Thames.  Endeavour passed into other hands after Cook's voyage and ended up in America where a civil war was in progress to secede from British rule.  Britain's old nemesis - the French - were assisting the colonists and the British were finding ways to stop French ships supplying arms to the rebels by entering American ports.

Endeavour had been renamed " Lord Sandwich 2 " and was no longer owned by the Royal navy.  She was now a cargo carrying merchant ship, old and of little value and she was seized and deliberately sunk to form a port blockade.  The exact location was not accurately recorded and she was simply one of several ships scuttled across the entrance to Rhode Island.

Historians in the United States have been interested in that era of American history and research on the wrecks at Rhode Island has been ongoing for twenty-five years.  One distinctive feature of the Endeavour will be the type of timber used in her construction.   Unlike the other scuttled wrecks, she was built in Yorkshire in the UK from local materials.  Wood samples can be scientifically evaluated to prove authenticity.

This search for the Endeavour has escalated into a major operation.  The Maritime Museum has released  3D images of the wreckage compiled from 10,000 separate photos and core samples will be sent to Australia for scientific evaluation..   It seems to be a simple matter of dotting the i's and crossing the t's to prove her identity.

The big question is what happens then ?   No doubt there will be pressure to salvage the old wreck and bring it back to Australia.   What remains bears little resemblance to a ship and we already have a replica built as a bi-centenary project.  The remains will probably end up in a museum in Canberra where bemused visitors will read the plate and wonder why we bothered.

What odds that recovering a few bits of timber from the Endeavour ends up costing multi million dollars ?  There seems little intrinsic value in having timber from this old ship on display if it has no recognisable form.   We already have cannons and various other artifacts from the Endeavour abandoned when she was careened in Queensland after hitting the Great Barrier reef and being holed.

There are a lot of worthwhile projects awaiting funding that would serve a better purpose than wasting millions recovering rotting wood that has long passed recognition as part of a ship.   It would not rank high on the national priority list.