According to local legend, one of Captain Cook's ships used to sail around the world now rests at the bottom of Newport Harbor. It had been converted to a troop carrier during the war for American independence, and later sunk by the British to prevent the ship from being captured by the Americans.

His Majesty's Bark Endeavour was the ship in which Captain Cook first sighted Australia in 1770. The HMS Resolution, one of Cook's ships on his second and third expeditions into the Pacific is also thought to lie at the bottom of the harbor.

After Cook returned home in 1771 from his first Pacific voyage, the Endeavour was used as a supply ship on the South Antlantic Falkland Islands run until 1775. It was then sold by the Royal Navy, renamed the Lord Sandwich and used from 1776 as a troop transport in the American War of Independence. It brought German mercenaries from Hesse to New York and then Newport, and may subsequently have been used as a prison ship to confine rebel sympathisers.

An initial American attack against British forces at Newport was fought off but, after the French-American alliance in 1778, a French fleet joined up with the American army to capture Rhode Island. This was also fought off. But in the meantime, in the face of apparently overwhelming odds, the British scuttled a number of vessels to prevent them falling into enemy hands.

They were sunk in strategic positions to prevent the French ships coming close inshore. Some of the sunken vessels were transports, including the Lord Sandwich. By coincidence, the ship used by Cook on his second Pacific voyage, the Resolution, came to be abandoned in Newport also, in 1793.

In 1999, archeologists tentitively identified the remains of the Endeavour. The lower part of the hull appears to survive in good condition under a pile of 'ballast', heavy material used to give the ship stability.

The Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project has established a foundation specifically to manage the identification and excavation of the Endeavour and the Resolution and had invited the Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) in Sydney to participate in the project. Three members of the ANMM spent four weeks working with volunteer divers from the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project on the first stage of fieldwork. They attempted identification of the Endeavour by an examination of the ballast and timber samples and especially by checking vital measurements, such as the placement of masts and overall dimensions, against British Admiralty archive plans for the bark. The ANMM holds a quantity of material jettisoned by Cook on the Great Barrier Reef and comparisons will be made with material from the ballast. Wood samples will be analysed for traces of Australian timbers used in repairs following Endeavour's stranding on the Great Barrier Reef.

Unfortunately, scientific tests of stone ballast, coal and timber collected by three marine archaeologists from Newport Harbour have now revealed the wreck they were diving on is not the Endeavour.

"It's disappointing this initial search has not been successful, but the four-week excavation has obviously narrowed down the hunt," Senator Hill said. "Museum staff remain convinced the Endeavour is one of the 12 remaining vessels yet to be surveyed and the historical evidence in this regard is beyond question."

Over the last fifty years, suba divers have stripped many of the old wrecks of portable artifacts, but that hasn't stopped the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project (RIMAP) teams from continuing their search.

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RIMAP's other projects include the study of the reputed slave ship GEM, British brig BESSIE ROGERS, British Revolutionary War Frigates, HMS CERBERUS, HMS LARK and HMS ORPHEUS, the remains of the British Revolutionary War Fleet, including transports and Royal Navy ships sunk in 1778. They also take interest in more modern underwater archeological sites, like the varous US Navy vessels sunk in Rhode Island waters, the German Submarine U-853, and the steamship Empire State.

But the alure and mistique of the HMB Endeavour holds a special place in the hearts of historians and archeologists around Newport. For many years, it was believed that the ship had either rotted away at her moorings in an English seaport, or perhaps been sold to a French whailing fleet to be lost somewhere at sea, but the newly discovered documentation pointing to Newport as the Endeavour's final resting place is solid and undeniable. It makes an important historical artifact -- a whole ship -- thought to be lost forever now something that might again be discovered.

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