Australian archaeologists have found the wreck of Endeavour, the vessel of Captain James Cook that sank off the coast of the US state of Rhode Island over 200 years ago. But their US research partners are not amused.
The vessel, in which Cook sailed in a historic voyage to Australia and New Zealand between 1768 and 1771, sank in Newport Harbor during the War of Independence.
"Since 1999, we have been investigating several 18th-century shipwrecks in a 2-square-mile area (3.7 square kilometers) where we believed that Endeavour sank," Kevin Sumption, director of the Australian National Maritime Museum, told a Thursday media briefing.
"Based on archival and archaeological evidence, I'm convinced it's the Endeavour," he added. But the US Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project also involved in efforts to locate the vessel has slammed the announcement as premature.
In a statement, the executive director of the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project, DK Abbass said the Australians were guilty of a "breach of contract," adding that "conclusions will be driven by proper scientific process and not Australian emotions or politics."
The Australian Museum, in its turn, denied violating any partnership agreement, with a spokesperson saying Abbass was "entitled to her own opinion regarding the vast amount of evidence we have accumulated."
Endeavour is the ship used by Captain Cook to voyage from England to Tahiti before charting Australia's east coast in 1770.
When it sank in the Newport Harbor, in August 1778, it was renamed as Lord Sandwich and used by the British forces to lockup prisoners during the American War of Independence.
The British forces deliberately sunk Captain Cook’s ship and four others to block a French fleet from entering the harbor to support the Americans in the War of Independence.
This took place few months before Cook died in Hawaii, in February 1779. The museum said only about 15 percent of the vessel had survived two centuries under water. "The focus is now on what can be done to protect and preserve it,” Sumption said.
