Cook and the Pacific,which opens on the weekend,focuses on Captain James Cook’s three Pacific voyages and explores the Pacific region through the eyes of the British voyagers and the First Nations peoples they met.
Co-curator Martin Woods said the timing of the discovery of the shipwreck couldn’t be better,as the Endeavour featured heavily in the exhibition.
The show includes Cook’s journals from the three expeditions,the first of which was undertaken on the Endeavour in 1768,as well as a floor plan of the ship,and a cannon that was jettisoned after the Endeavour nearly ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef.
Dr Woods said the ship had originally been a “Whitby Cat”,or coal and timber ship,built for that purpose in 1764 and extensively refitted when it was decided that it would suit long-distance navigation.
“It was purchased from the Whitby shipbuilding yards for about 2800 pounds,and then refitted for almost the same amount,putting new decks in,more sails,making it more robust for longer voyaging,” Dr Woods said.
“It was nearly lost at Endeavour River,a significant number of crew died at the end of the first voyage at Batavia from malaria and dysentery,and when it came back to Woolwich Dockyards,it was refitted for able transport. It was then doing service to the Falkland Islands and then eventually as a naval transport during the American War of Independence,which is where it found its way to Rhode Island.”
Captain Cook himself - a key figure in Australia’s early history,with countless streets,parks and statues in his name across the country - was the son of a farm labourer,who was apprenticed to a shipowner and sailed coal ships in and around England.