The ship that eventually bore the name HMB Endeavour and passed into history as the ship on which James Cook discovered Australia, was initially built in 1764 as the Earl of Pembroke, a Whitby collier transporting coal up and down the east coast of the UK. She was converted to a research vessel and purchased by the British Royal Navy in 1768. Leaving the UK in August of that year, it took 20 months for her to arrive off the East coast of Australia at Botany Bay in April 1770. After an eventful journey home in which she was nearly lost after running aground on the Great Barrier Reef she arrived back in the UK on the 12th July 1771. Over the next 7 years she saw service as a transport ship, before eventually being scuttled off Rhode Island during the American Revolutionary War in 1778. A few relics from the original ship have been discovered from her 1770 grounding on the Great Barrier Reef, when cannons, anchor and ballast were thrown overboard in an effort to lighten and re-float her. A small piece of that ballast is the only original part of this full scale accurate replica that was launched in 1994. This replica has completed 2 circumnavigations of the globe, including a repeat of the original 18th Century voyage.
The vessel is now docked at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney’s Darling Harbour, laid out exactly as it would have been in Cook’s time and it can be visited by the public most days. The ship still occasionally puts to sea with paying and professional crew – it would be a wonderful experience to be onboard when it did!