Sailing the replica Endeavour
It's hard not to love the Bark Endeavour, the replica of the ship in which Cook voyaged to Tahiti to observe the transit of the planet Venus in 1768. Snub-nosed and broad in the beam, she's neither sylphic nor swift. Nonetheless, in full sail with jibs arching like wings over the sea, the Bark Endeavour is stately. Her mainmast is small compared with many working tall ships, but it is about as high as the bark is long and together her three masts carry a vast spread of canvas. These balanced proportions, like her size, are pleasing. The converted collier, on which Cook, 90-odd men, a menagerie of animals, and provisions for 18 months, all circumnavigated the globe, is small to the point of seeming toy-like. One can only wonder at the fact that a vessel so minute could have weathered the Horn and survived a scrape with the Great Barrier Reef before returning safely to Britain after almost three years in southern waters.
'... the replica Endeavour has, in many communities, become a rallying point for protest.'
Today, the fascination with ships like the Bark Endeavour seems universal. Every year vast numbers of people all over the world are drawn to them. Tall ship challenges like the one held recently in Seattle typically draw crowds of many thousands. Centennial celebrations in the United States, in Australia and New Zealand were commemorated, and protested, with replica ships.
What is the source of this fascination? Certainly national pride, nostalgia and a sense of common origins and purpose contribute to the public's interest. But square-riggers also exert other, more personal claims on the imagination: going aboard we feel we are in direct contact with the past. For Aborigines and Pacific islanders whose historical encounter with Cook had a troubled set of meanings, the replica has, in many communities, become a rallying point for protest. For others, striding the quarterdeck of the Bark Endeavour means 'playing Cook'. It allows us to re-enact 'discovery' and the spirit of adventure that surely inspires voyages to remote and exotic places.
So, does our fascination with the Endeavour parallel Cook's own? Like most of his late 18th-century contemporaries, Cook was not an enthusiastic writer about the sea. His journal begins on the 27 May 1768 with scarcely a mention of his ship and the impending voyage. He says merely that he hoisted the pennant, took up his commission and was busy readying the Endeavour for sail. There were masts, yards and rigging to be set up, stores and ballast to be stowed, and a myriad other tasks. When the Endeavour finally embarked on the voyage proper, sailing from Plymouth for Madeira and the Canary Islands in August, there was no fanfare attendant on the grand undertaking. The journal entry is a terse one. Cook remarked on the weather and signalled for his botanists, Banks and Solander, to come aboard. With that, the Endeavour slipped away.
Published: 2002-09-04