HMS Endeavor is a small barque originally intended for the transport of coal. It was built in 1764. The ship would have served its time without leaving a noticeable trace in history, but on March 28, 1768, the state bought it and an unexpected height came in its career.
The Endeavor sailed around the world under the command of Captain James Cook. In the next four years, the expedition on a barque passed the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans.
The main purpose of the voyage was to observe the passage of Venus across the solar disk in 1769. Then several European countries undertook more than a couple of dozen expeditions to observe this phenomenon. Astronomers were interested in the parallax of the Sun, by which it was possible to estimate the distance from us to our star.
Observations were made in Tahiti on June 3, 1769. After that, the expedition went west, exploring and mapping new lands along the way. Captain Cook managed to open the strait between the North and South Islands of New Zealand, to map a significant part of the east coast of Australia, to prove that New Guinea is a separate island and not part of the continent.
At the end of the 20th century, a group of Australian enthusiasts built a replica of Endeavor, fortunately the drawings have survived. The coincidence of the details of the interior with the historical reality, of course, is not guaranteed, they are reproduced according to the available data on how the ships of that era looked.
Author: Sergey Sysoev