UMass Amherst Archaeologist Directing Field Work in Search for Remains of Endeavour

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left to right,  Dr. James Hunter, Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM); Kieran Hosty, ANMM; William Burns, RIMAP, Greg DeAscentis, RIMAP; Dr. Kerry Lynch (kneeling). Photo courtesy of RIMAP
left to right, Dr. James Hunter, Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM); Kieran Hosty, ANMM; William Burns, RIMAP, Greg DeAscentis, RIMAP; Dr. Kerry Lynch (kneeling). Photo courtesy of RIMAP

AMHERST, Mass. – A University of Massachusetts Amherst archaeologist is playing a critical role in helping solve a 240-year-old maritime mystery with the possible discovery of the HMS Endeavour, the ship that Lt. James Cook captained on the first voyage by British explorers to Australia.

Kerry Lynch, a project director at Archaeological Services who specializes in underwater archaeology, is field director for the exploration of Revolutionary War activity at Newport Harbor, Rhode Island and has been working at the site since 1997. At a recent press conference in Newport, Lynch and other researchers announced they have made a promising discovery at the bottom of Newport Harbor that could possibly be the remains of Cook’s famous ship.

The journey of the Endeavour to the bottom of Newport Harbor was a long one.

Launched in 1764 as the collier Earl of Pembroke, the ship was bought by the British Royal Navy for Cook’s 1768-71 scientific mission to the Pacific Ocean. Sold by the navy to private investors in 1775, she was renamed the Lord Sandwich. She became part of American history, as well as Australian and British, during the Revolutionary War.

Chartered by the British Board of Transport, she was used as a troop transport to carry Hessian mercenaries to fight in the war. She was also used as a prison ship to hold American prisoners, Lynch said.

When an invading French fleet approached Newport in 1778 in support of the American side, the Lord Sandwich and 12 other ships were scuttled to block the harbor.

It was only in 1999 that research in London by Kathy Abbass, director of the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project (RIMAP), revealed that the Lord Sandwich and Endeavour were the same ship. By that time, Abbass was already leading RIMAP’s efforts to research, record, document, interpret and help protect all the vessels lost in Rhode Island waters during the Revolution, and Lynch was diving there.

Lynch, who as field director leads the divers and scientists on the scene, is also vice president of the RIMAP board of directors. Each year, the diving season at the harbor begins in early September, just after the tourists have gone. Lynch said the work is generally performed in 30-50 feet of water, but is hampered by a visibility of only about five feet.

Overall, 10 of the 13 scuttled ships have been found. In 2016 additional research in London revealed the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavor was among a group of five ships that were scuttled north of Goat Island, a small island in Newport Harbor. Four shipwreck sites have been identified in this vicinity. The location of the five ships in particular was gleaned from documents at the Admiralty and considerably narrowed the search area for Endeavour.

Lynch says the Endeavor was the largest of the five in that scuttled group, and they have identified the largest among the four discovered crafts. The question that remains is whether this ship is the Endeavour, or if it is the so-far missing fifth. Time consuming searches around these four vessels have not turned up a fifth shipwreck.

“We’re pretty excited about this one site,” Lynch said.

Final identification will take much more work, however. The next steps include excavation to measure timbers buried in the muck and assess the size of the currently obscured vessel, recover possible diagnostic artifacts, and non-destructive inspections, such as analyzing 3D imaging of site features and excavations.

Past that, there will be analysis of wood samples from all the wrecks as records of their construction list the woods used. Additional clues may be pollen embedded in the pitch between timbers that could only have come from the Pacific, exotic wood used during repairs, or bits of cloth or buttons from a Hessian uniform.

“I would be surprised if there is a ‘smoking gun,’” Lynch said. “Proving the surrounding vessels are not Endeavour will be as important.”

There can be no excavation until a lab can be found to handle the recovered material, which could quickly decay outside an anaerobic environment.

Lynch is contracted for the work though Archaeological Services and also volunteers her time. The project is supported by classes, including site mapping and other training provided by Lynch; RIMAP memberships; federal and other grants; including ones from the Australian National Maritime Museum.

“We are still interested in the fleet as a whole and the Revolutionary War,” Lynch said. “The rest of the world is interested in Endeavor.”

Lynch took up scuba diving in 1989 for recreation. “As I studied archaeology, I wanted to be able to combine it with my love of the marine environment,” she said. Her specialty is submerged Native American sites, which she often seeks in collaboration with a geophysical crew. For example, she found evidence of early habitation in Salem Harbor under 10 feet of deposits, from a time before the most recent rise in sea level thousands of years ago.

A replica of Endeavour that was launched in 1994 sails regularly and is berthed alongside the Maritime Museum in Sydney Harbor. The U.S. Space Shuttle Endeavour was named after the ship.