COOK’S SHIP

Evening Star, Issue 20320, 31 October 1929, Page 11

COOK’S SHIP

ENDEAVOUR HAD NO FIGUREHEAD CABLED FIND IMCORRECT [Psk United Peess Association.} . WELLINGTON, October 31. Lieutenant-colonel H. C. H. Burton, late Royal Artillery, writes to the Press Association from Nelson:—“The reported discovery of the figurehead of the Endeavour is interesting. Unfortunately it is on record that when Cook returned from his first voyage (the only one in which the Endeavour was eiuployed) ho reported to the Admiralty that he had been put to some difficulty in Brazil because the Portuguese Governor refused to believe that the Endeavour was a man-o’-war owing to her having no figurehead, and Cook therefore asked the Admiralty to furnish Ins ships on his second and third voyages with figureheads that they might be duly recognised as men-o’-war. The absence of a figurehead on the Endeavour during the time she was employed by Cook is further borne out by the original dockyard draught of the ship, showing the alterations made to her by the Admiralty when she was purchased into the service for Cook’s voyage. This drawing is now a valued possession of the Sydney Yacht Club. The vessel is shown with a straight stem and no figurehead. These data are taken from a lecture on Cook’s ships by Mr W. Larid Clowes, the eminent naval historian, published in the 1 English Geographical Journal ’ in the March, 1927, number.

[A London cablegram on October 24 stated. The figurehead of Captain Cook’s ship, the Endeavour, in which he explored the Australian coast, the South Seas, and New Zealand, is said to have been discovered in a summer house at a little Derbyshire village near Chesterfield. The figurehead is a wooden one carved in the form of a woman. It is 9ft'in height, and was covered with many coats of whitewash, which, when removed, disclosed a white robe, a flowing blue sash, and a string of rod beads round the throat.]