5 Things to Know About Captain Cook’s ‘Missing’ Ship

In 1778, British officers in Newport Harbor stared at a shabby old transport ship and ordered it sunk as part of a defensive barrier. No one on that cold American morning seemed to care that the battered hull had once carried James Cook to the Pacific and into the history books.

Two and a half centuries later, divers and historians in Rhode Island announced that this same wreck, long forgotten under mud and mussels, was almost certainly Cook’s Endeavour. The news raced around the world. Then came the arguments.

So what actually happened to Captain Cook’s ship, why did it end up off Rhode Island, and what does this discovery really change? Here are five things that matter about the story of the Endeavour and its rediscovery.

1. Captain Cook’s Endeavour did not vanish, it was quietly sold and renamed

First, the basic myth-busting. Captain Cook’s ship Endeavour did not disappear into the Pacific or sink in some heroic storm. After Cook’s first voyage (1768–1771), the Royal Navy simply finished with her.

Endeavour was a converted coal-carrying bark, built for hauling cargo along the English coast. She was sturdy and slow, perfect for long voyages and carrying supplies, but not a glamorous warship. After returning from the Pacific, she was refitted and used for more routine work. By the 1770s, the Admiralty saw no reason to keep an aging, unfashionable vessel around.

In 1775, the Navy sold her into private hands. Her new owners renamed her Lord Sandwich. Under that name she was hired out as a transport ship, including for carrying troops and supplies during the American Revolutionary War.

A clean definition: Captain Cook’s Endeavour was a Whitby-built coal ship repurposed by the Royal Navy for exploration, then sold and renamed Lord Sandwich for use as a transport. The name change is why the ship seemed to vanish from the record.

A concrete example of this paper trail comes from British Admiralty and transport records that refer to a ship called Lord Sandwich, formerly Endeavour, being used as a troop transport. These documents are the link that takes the story from the Pacific to the American east coast.

This matters because it explains why no one “found” Endeavour for so long. Historians were not looking for Endeavour on the seafloor. They had to follow Lord Sandwich through account books and wartime paperwork before anyone knew where to search.

2. The ship ended up in Rhode Island because of the American Revolution

So how did Cook’s Pacific workhorse end up off Newport, Rhode Island, of all places? The short answer is: the American Revolutionary War sent her there.

By 1776–1778, the British were fighting to hold onto key ports in the rebellious colonies. Newport was one of them. To move and supply troops, the British hired transport ships, including the former Endeavour, now Lord Sandwich.

In 1778, the French entered the war on the American side and sent a fleet to Rhode Island. The British in Newport panicked. To block the harbor and slow any French attack, they scuttled a line of old transports and merchant ships at the entrance to the harbor. Lord Sandwich was one of those sacrificial hulls.

Contemporary records from the British side list Lord Sandwich among the transports sunk as part of this defensive barrier. American sources also mention British ships being deliberately sunk in Newport Harbor to obstruct the channel.

The key example here is the British transport list from 1778 that names Lord Sandwich among several vessels scuttled in the same area of Newport Harbor. This is the documentary anchor for the modern search: it told archaeologists that if Endeavour survived, she would be one of a cluster of wrecks in a very specific patch of water.

This matters because it ties a famous ship of Pacific exploration directly into the American Revolution. Endeavour’s end was not a grand voyage or a storm at sea. It was a practical wartime decision, made in haste, in a small New England harbor.

3. The wreck was not “found overnight” – it took decades of detective work

When headlines say “Captain Cook’s missing ship found after 250 years,” it sounds like a single eureka moment. The reality is much slower and messier.

Marine archaeologists have been surveying Newport Harbor since the late 1990s. The Australian National Maritime Museum and the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project (RIMAP) worked together to map and study the cluster of wrecks that matched the 1778 scuttling records.

They identified at least a dozen wreck sites in the area where Lord Sandwich was supposed to lie. Each one had to be mapped, sampled, and compared against what is known about Endeavour’s size, construction, and modifications.

One wreck, known as RI 2394, emerged as the strongest candidate. Its size and hull form match an 18th-century Whitby-built bark. The construction details line up with what is known of Endeavour’s design. Its location fits the historical records for Lord Sandwich’s scuttling.

For example, archaeologists measured the surviving hull and compared it to known dimensions of Endeavour from Admiralty plans and dockyard records. The length, beam, and structural layout are consistent with a ship of Endeavour’s type and origin. Timber samples also match the kind of oak used in British shipbuilding of that period.

Marine archaeology definition: identifying a famous wreck usually relies on a combination of location, hull type, construction details, and historical documents. Rarely is there a single “smoking gun” artifact with the ship’s name on it.

This matters because it pushes back against the idea that shipwreck discoveries are simple treasure hunts. The Endeavour story is really about slow archival work, careful mapping, and a lot of mud, not a diver suddenly spotting a nameplate.

4. The identification is strong, but not everyone agrees it is 100% certain

Here is where the story gets contentious. In February 2022, the Australian National Maritime Museum publicly stated that the wreck in Newport Harbor was “conclusively” identified as Endeavour. Almost immediately, RIMAP, its long-time partner, pushed back and said the announcement was premature.

The disagreement is not over whether this is a very likely candidate. It is about how strong the evidence needs to be before you say “this is Endeavour” without qualification.

On the “yes, it is” side, supporters point to the match between the wreck’s dimensions and a Whitby collier, the right construction features, the correct location among the 1778 scuttled ships, and the documentary trail linking Endeavour to Lord Sandwich and then to Newport. Taken together, they argue, the probability that this is anything else is very low.

On the more cautious side, RIMAP has argued that while the wreck is a strong candidate, more analysis and peer-reviewed publication are needed. They note that several similar ships were sunk in the same area, and that no artifact with the ship’s name or a unique identifying mark has been recovered so far.

A concrete example of this tension is RIMAP’s public statement in 2022, which accused the Australian museum of breaching protocol and stressed that “the study of the site is ongoing.” That is unusually blunt language between long-time partners and shows how sensitive high-profile identifications can be.

So a snippet-ready summary: Most experts agree that the Newport wreck is very likely Captain Cook’s Endeavour, but some archaeologists prefer to call it a strong candidate until more evidence is published.

This matters because it reminds us that history is not just about what happened, but how sure we are. The Endeavour wreck is now a case study in how scientific caution collides with media hunger for definitive answers.

5. Finding Endeavour changes how we remember exploration, empire, and Indigenous encounters

It is easy to treat this as a neat nautical story: famous explorer’s ship found, mystery solved, everyone happy. The reality is heavier.

Endeavour is not just a symbol of “Age of Discovery” heroics. It is also tied to violent encounters, dispossession, and the long shadow of empire, especially in the Pacific.

On Cook’s first voyage, Endeavour carried him to places that would later be claimed by Britain, including the east coast of Australia in 1770. That landing at Botany Bay and later at Possession Island is part of the story Australians argue about today: who “discovered” what, and what that meant for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who were already there.

For many Indigenous communities, Endeavour is not a neutral scientific vessel. It is the ship that brought surveyors, flags, and claims of sovereignty. The same hull that charted coasts also helped set in motion systems of colonization, land seizure, and cultural disruption.

A concrete example of this contested memory came during the 250th anniversary of Cook’s landing in 2020. Plans to send a replica of Endeavour around Australia drew protests and criticism from Indigenous activists who saw it as celebrating invasion rather than exploration.

Finding the physical remains of Endeavour in Rhode Island does not change what happened in 1770 on the Australian coast. But it gives museums, educators, and communities a powerful object around which to tell a fuller story, one that includes both scientific achievement and the human cost of empire.

It also ties together three very different histories: British maritime exploration, the American Revolution, and Pacific colonization. One workmanlike coal ship, repurposed and renamed, sits at the intersection of all three.

This matters because the wreck is not just a relic for divers. It is a material link to debates over who gets remembered as a hero, whose stories were ignored, and how nations like Australia, Britain, and the United States reckon with their 18th-century pasts.

So what do we really gain from finding Captain Cook’s missing ship, or at least its most likely remains? We gain a clearer chain of evidence for what happened to a famous vessel. We gain a reminder that history often ends not with a bang but with a bureaucratic sale and a wartime scuttling. And we gain a physical focal point for arguments that are very much alive: about exploration, empire, and whose version of the past ends up in the headlines.