By Scott Malone

PROVIDENCE, May 4 (Reuters) – The wreckage of the Endeavour, the storied British ship that 18th-century explorer Captain James Cook sailed by means of the uncharted South Pacific, could lie a couple of hundred toes off Rhode Island’s coast in Newport Harbor, researchers mentioned Wednesday.

The 105-foot (32-meter) lengthy, three-masted bark, later renamed the Lord Sandwich, had been employed out by the British Royal Navy as a troop transport when it was one in every of 13 ships intentionally sunk by the British in 1778 in an effort to blockade the harbor.

New analysis by the Rhode Island Marine Archeology Project signifies it was one in every of a bunch of 5 of the 13 vessels sunk in an effort to forestall French forces from coming to the help of the rebellious American colonies, mentioned Kathy Abbass, government director of the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission.

An inspection of the positioning by RIMAP, in water lower than 50 toes (15 m) deep, discovered the remnants of 4 ships and an indentation the place a fifth could also be, Abbass mentioned. They had been positioned to guard a battery of cannon.

“When we saw that here’s five that were put in front of the north battery, well glory be, we found four of them and there’s a hole where the fifth one should be,” Abbass instructed reporters in Providence on Wednesday. “That’s pretty significant.”

Cook sailed the Endeavour with a crew of 94 on a 1768-1771 Pacific expedition that marked the primary time Westerners laid eyes on New Zealand and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

The voyage was the primary Western expedition by means of the South Pacific to finish with a lot of the crew alive, mentioned Edward Gray, a Florida State University historical past professor and writer of a 2007 e-book about John Ledyard, a Connecticut-born man who served on Cook’s remaining Pacific voyage.

“Every time Europeans did this, it was an absolute cataclysm,” Gray mentioned. “There was no record of anyone exploring the Pacific without massive loss of life.”

To affirm that the wreckage is actually that of the Endeavour, RIMAP might want to ship divers down to examine the positioning, finding out the design of the vessels and any particles comparable to buttons or different gear to outlive that might affirm its identification, Abbass mentioned.

The privately funded group estimates it might want to elevate about $1 million to finish the fieldwork and one other $7.5 million to construct a proposed analysis facility and museum to review and showcase the artifacts.

INSPIRATIONAL STORY

The story of the Endeavour has impressed subsequent tales of exploration, together with the Star Trek tv and film collection. One of the United States’ former fleet of house shuttles additionally took the Endeavour’s title. There is a duplicate of the ship on the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney.

This will not be the primary time wreckage has been recognized because the Endeavour. Another ship was present in an space of the harbor that has since been constructed over as landfill, which will actually have been the Resolution, the ship Cook sailed round Antarctica, Abbass mentioned.

“It turns out that Rhode Island, specifically Newport, is the home of two vessels that went around the world with Cook,” Abbass mentioned.

It will not be clear how lengthy it is going to take the researchers to substantiate if the wreckage is actually the Endeavour.

“It’s a slow journey and a very careful and particular journey,” mentioned Charlotte Taylor, with the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission. “Every step of the way takes time, money, energy.”

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Will Dunham and James Dalgleish)

(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2016.