HMB Endeavour, 2007

These photos were taken when I was doing a stint of tour guiding on board. I took photos during the quiet times and then wrote up my "spiel" as Live Journal post (which is what I've shared below). The camera was a small one a friend gave me after mine broke, so the photos are small/low resolution. The 2012 post has better photos. And yes,  a squirrel appears in some. It has escaped from here.

Endeavour (launched 1993) is a replica of James Cook's ship, originally built as a collier but convert to an exploration vessel by the Royal Navy in 1768. The modern ship was built to be as close as the original as possible so there are some interesting features such as the lack of headroom as a result of adding extra accommodation for navy officers and scientists.

Just before you go aboard, have a look towards the stern.

Stern carvings
Endeavour has no figurehead, but some lovely stern carvings. Unfortunately, there's a fence across the wharf so you can't be behind to see all of them. This is the side window of the great cabin.

Towards foredeck
On board, the first stop is the foredeck. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to spend any time here so I don't know the talk.

From foredeck
From the foredeck, looking aft. You can see the gangway.

From foredeck, starboard side
Same direction, on the starboard side.

Coils
Now down the companionway. Turn around so you're facing the steps like a ladder and grab hold of the rope, that's it, slowly, now grab hold of those ropes on the side and, that's it, keep going. The first stop down here is the firehearth.

Firehearth sb
The stove was state of the art when it was first made. It's actually a working copy. The BBC made a documentary back in 2001 (The Ship) and they used the stove to cook all the meals for six weeks.

Firehearth fuel
On the side here, is where the wood goes. This whole thing here is full of water and these coppers are where the food is put in and boiled. Now, at each of the table, six men sat and for every meal, one of the men would bring up the food in a rope bag, that would then be cooked in the copper.

Bag
Each bag has a wooden tag with a number on it, and when the food was cooked, the numbers was called and the man would come up, get the food and take it back to the table. This way, Thompson, the one-handed cook, was able to cook for 94 men over 3 years.

Firehearth port
On this side is a oven for cooking pies and bread for the officers and gentlemen.

Firehearth rear
Around the back here is a spit. As you can see, the oven is sitting on stones to protect the deck.

Breakfast was taken at 6 am, it consisted of wheat porridge and scurvy grass. At midday was dinner of boiled salt beef, sauerkraut and vegetable, as you can see in the barrels.

Mess Deck Barrels
Cheese and pease pudding were sometimes added. The evening meal was eaten cold -- whatever a man had saved from dinner and once a week raisin pudding. There was a daily allowance of one gallon of beer and a pound of dry biscuit.

Firehearth port
Around here are the cabins and workshops for the bosun, sailmaker and carpenter. They're used as cabins by the modern crew.

Mess Deck
Here 50 (the cards says; everything else says 65, hmm 94 total on board, which is 6 commissioned officers, 15 warrant officers, 53 able seamen, 12 marines, 9 gentlemen & servants, 1 astronomer & servant, that's 97) men ate, six at each table, sitting on the sea chests, which they'd used to store their belongings. Each man had to supply his own spoon, mug and bowl. Many of these were made from wood, although there was some pewter and pottery. Each month they'd elect a 'Captain of the Mess' who was responsible for taking their food up to be cooked.

Mess Deck
The fore table here has stuff for the cook to use. The rear table was used by the marines. The barrels over the tables held vinegar. You can see over here where where the sailmaker has been working.

Mess Deck
That's taken with no flash. Where the grating is above, it's well light. Along the sides, it's obviously darker.

Looking down through the grate...

From above

Now if you'll move one to the next place.

Mess Deck SB
Here on the mess deck was where the sailors lived when they weren't working. There were three watches so at any time, a third of them would be gone, but the other two thirds would be in here. Unless they were at anchor, when all would be in here. It got rather crowded.

MD Hammocks hung
Here above the mess tables is where they slung their hammocks. Each man had a spot, see up here where it has MM7, and then over here, there's another MM7. So his hammock went from there to there. Here, you can see on either where MM8 and MM6 slung their hammocks. Each sailor had 14" of space.

Mess Deck SB
The officer's cot (far right on the photo) wouldn't normally be here, it's just for comparison. They got 18" of space each.

The lead line is this. Have a hold, but be careful, it's heavy. Don't drop it. That's to measure how far down the sea bed is. Whatever is on the sea bed will get pick up in the hole at the base, so you can tell what it is as well as far down.

With the log line, this bit is thrown over and it's dragged out. When the first of these knots is reached, the glass is turned over, and they count how many knots are dragged out in the 28 secs. Which gives the speed in knots.

The cat-o-nine tails is over here, with its red bag, so you can let the cat out of the bag. (Sorry.) It was only used up on deck though, because there wasn't enough room down here to swing a cat. (Sorry.)

MD Marines
Down under there on the left, is where the marines slept. You have the sailors here, and the officers up at the stern, and the marines are in the middle here, in case of a mutiny.

When the collier Earl of Pembroke was converted to a Royal Navy exploration ship, they had to add an extra deck and, structurally, the easiest place to put it was here. In the middle of the ship, that worked out well, but towards the stern, the officer's mess and great cabin are above, so there's less headroom.

MD Low
To get through here, you bend over and walk along to the door of the midimates mess and, make sure you keep your head down still, you go in and sit on one of the sea chests. Then you can put your head up.

MMM Towards stern
You can see it's not very high in here.

MMM Not very high
This space in here was the midshipmen's and mate's mess. Here eight young man hung their hammocks, ate and socialised. When they weren't working, this is pretty much where they lived. They kept their belongings in the sea chests. A lot of the mess supplies were kept on shelves and along the back. One of the midshipman was Johnathon Munkhouse, who was 17. He was the younger brother of the surgeons. Another man in here was master's mate, Richard Pickersgill, age 19, he'd been to Tahiti before, two years earlier on the Dolphin.

MMM Cabins
Around the sides are the officer's cabins. Although they slept in there and worked at their desks, they messed up above. A lot of effort has gone into making the contents of the cabins as accurate as possible. The curtains and linen in the cabins is hand loomed and hand sewn. The journals are on handmade paper.

MMM Master
On the right here is the master's cabin. Robert Molyneux was just 22. His job was navigation, (something I've forgotten) and keeping stores. He held equal rank with the lieutenants and was in charge of the third watch. Except for the headroom, he's got one of the bigger cabins.

MMM 3rd Lt
Next to him, is the third lieutenant. John Gore was American. Above his bunk, you'll see a gun. He'd said to be the first man to have shot a kangaroo. He was one who brought the ships home at the end of the third voyage, after Cook was killed in Hawaii.

On the end, just outside the door, is the captain's clerk's cabin. He was responsible for some of the record keeping on the ship. He doesn't seem to have been too popular. He got his ear cut in a brawl in his cabin. How enough men managed to fit into his cabin to have a brawl is the question.

Cabins port
On the other side, the gunner's cabin is at the far end, outside the door. He was responsible for the guns and cannons. He got punished for stealing rum, but rejoined Cook for the second voyage.

MMM Surgeon
Next along on the left is the surgeon's cabin. The equipment in his cabin is apparently put together from an actual list. William Munkhouse was the older brother of one of the midshipman. Both brothers died on the voyage. After leaving New Holland, the Endeavour stopped at Batavia in the Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta).

MMM Surgeon, side
The story I was told was that in order to avoid picking up the diseases that were prevalent in Batavia, they didn't get water here but instead stopped at a small island, however the water here was also foul. Whether it was picked up there or in Batavia, malaria and dysentery killed almost 1/3 of the crew on the way home.

MMM Stern loading ports
The stern loading ports here are used for loading timber and things too long to come down the hatches.

Have a good look in the cabins, there's a lot to see in each one.

MMM Surgeon
When you're done, go out that door on the left and there's a ladder on the right. Go up there and you'll find the officer's mess.

Outside GM
That's the pantry immediately in front of you as you come up the ladder. If you come around here

GM From outside
and through this door, you're in the Officer Mess and Gentlemen's Quarters. You can see Sydney Parkinson's cabin there on the right, and the door at the back leads through to the great cabin.

Gentlemen means the scientists who were accompanying the rich young man who was financing much of the trip. The primary purpose of the Endeavour's expedition was to obverse the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. By doing this in different locations, scientists thought they could work out the distance of the earth from the sun. So in a cooperative effort, different countries outfitted expeditions to various obscure bits of the world. The British went off to Canada, I think, and Tahiti. Cook also secret orders, to search for the Great South Land, the large land mass that had to be down there somewhere to balance the land mass in the northern hemisphere. They didn't find it, it not being there, but they charted the west coast of New Zealand and the east coast of New Holland.

Gentlemen's Mess
The central area is where the officer's ate and socialised. The gentlemen's cabins are around the outside. Sporing's cabin is over on the left. Note the fold down table, which is quite a practical piece of furniture. That gives a good view of the black circles on the deck too, that show where the trunnels are.

GC from GM
There's a short passage, the lobby, leading from the mess, with a washstand on one side and a cabin window on the other.

GC Washstand
GC Cook
The great cabin is usually occupied by the captain and, it's probably the biggest space of all (actually the mess deck is bigger but point is made), but when Banks and his scientists were on board, they used this cabin.

On the table, you can see some botanical prints. You might have noticed Dr Solander's cabin when you first came up the ladder (not in the photos though, I was sitting with my back to it). Every plant speciment collected was drawn, dried and taken back to England. On the end of the table are the charts, you can look through them.

The cabin on the left here, behind all the doors, is Cook's cabin.

You can see it through the window just before the door, you might have seen it when you came in. The cabin over to the right is Banks' cabin.

GC Banks closeup
He's said to have been 6'4 tall, so he preferred to sleep out here and his two dogs slept in the cabin. They were used for hunting down game (a greyhound & a spaniel), so they did earn their keep.

Banks' desk is just there. The books above it are taken from a list of 120 books that he brought with him, the actual editions were researched and the bindings recreated.

GC Desk
The stove is copied from one that was recovered from the wreck of the Pandora, who was wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef while bringing back Bounty mutineers.

On the walls and beams, you'll see various gifts given by native people to the Endeavour on her recent visits. (Two mentioned in the guide book are) The long one hanging over table there (a taiaha) and the carved one nearby (a manaia) are gifts from the Maori people in gratitude for the Endeavour replica returning the souls of five men killed by Cook in 1770. (Both visible in the next photo, which is taken with no flash, so you can get an idea of how light the room was. The other photos are all taken with the flash on, so the immediate area is lit but the rest is dark.)

GC Low down
In the stern post is a brass ring, inside that is a trunnel. Did you see the small black circles on the deck? Under those are the trunnels, the long wooden nails used to hold the planks down. That one was taken on the US space shuttle Endeavour in 1992. Then it was put there to create a symbolic link between sea and space.

The floor does slope a bit, but it would have been moving this and that way, and then that way too. Have you been up on the foredeck and seen the bowsprit? In some storms, that would end up in the water so you can imagine how much the ship moves. Still the artists managed to draw with a steady hand.

Feel free to have a look around.

GC Side window
The window has been taken out and put in that holder on the side.

GC, towards stern
Those stern window seats are very nice to sit in.

GC Foliage
Now, you go back through the Gentlemen's Mess and back up to the upper deck, unfortunately, I can't add anything about this part. To make up for that, I have some night time photos.

It's the middle of the night, between midnight and 1 am, and this ship is dark and very quiet.

Dark
This is the great cabin, those are the stern windows.

You know there are people around you sleeping and out there somewhere is the rest of the world but it doesn't you touch you.

Especially up on deck.

Mast
The masts have lights on them, which makes the timber glow quite nicely. The moon was being dramatic too.

Moon
Port side
River
From wharf
To finish off just before leaving, an early morning photo.

Guns in the morning
I'm reminded of one visitor, when I was talking about the guns being fired, who asked "but what about the cannons?" Too easy to forget that not everyone speaks the same "language".

And the visitor in the great cabin the day before, who put black and white film in his camera, because it seemed appropriate for the ship.

B&W

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