Endeavour team backs its research

Maritime experts who claim to have identified the remains of HMB Endeavour say they will make their research publicly available if their US counterparts continue to dispute it.

The mystery of the final resting place of Captain Cook’s HMB Endeavour has been solved according to the Australian National Maritime Museum. Picture: Supplied​

Australian maritime archaeologists who claim to have conclusively identified the remains of HMB Endeavour say they will make their research public and seek further expert scrutiny if their US counterparts continue to dispute the project’s findings.

Last week, the Australian Nat­ional Maritime Museum announced that a team of marine archaeologists had successfully identified James Cook’s vessel HMB Endeavour at the bottom of Newport Harbour, off Rhode Island, after a 22-year-long search.

Less than two hours later, the claim was strongly contested by the project’s US partners, the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project, which said confirmation was given “prematurely”.

It labelled the announcement as a “breach of contract”.

“What we see on the shipwreck site under study is consistent with what might be expected of the Endeavour, but there has been no indisputable data found to prove the site is that iconic vessel, and there are many unanswered questions that could overturn such an identification,” RIMAP director Kathy Abbass said in a statement on Thursday, adding that the project would be guided by “proper scientific process and not Australian emotions or politics”.

In response, ANMM said it had sent a dossier of more than 100 pages to Dr Abbass, outlining the scope of the research and the reasons behind the conclusions.

At the weekend, the organisation said it would make its research public if the findings continued to be contested, as well as making it available to a further third-party review process.

“This an extensive and detailed report, well over 100 pages, with lots of cross-referencing, so Dr ­Abbass will need time to go through that,” ANMM director Kevin Sumption said.

“We will wait to get a response from RIMAP until we consider bringing in any more peer review processes.

“We’ve done some preliminary peer reviews already, which give us confidence in the report, but there is another level of intensive peer review we could invite and we’re starting to look at that now if the report is disputed.”

Researchers who participated in the project for more than a decade expressed regret that the relationship with RIMAP had soured towards the end, but remain convinced the shipwreck located at site RI 2394 is Cook’s HMB ­Endeavour.

Maritime archaeologist Kieran Hosty, who has been part of the project since it began in 1999, said ANNM had anticipated Dr Abbass would be “very sensitive about ownership and property rights” when the announcement was made, but this would not shake the team’s conclusion that the shipwreck could now be conclusively identified.

“We do understand her ownership of this and acknowledge what her team have done in the hunt for the Endeavour … We went through the process of drawing up a memorandum of understanding to be clear about where we stand in this relationship and that expired in November 2020.

“We did realise there would be some feedback from the US, but we have laid out our reasoning behind the declaration, and we’re open to dialogue. We’re not like kids in a sandbox,” Mr Hosty said.

Leading members of the team, including Nigel Erskine, James Hunter and Mr Hosty, said they welcomed further expert scrutiny of the project’s research findings, reiterating their belief that they had proved “beyond reasonable doubt” that they had located the remains of the 18th-century ship.

ANMM said it would wait until it heard from Dr ­Abbass before making any further decisions.