HMS Endeavour – News, Research and Analysis – The Conversation

The Kongouro from New Holland, 1772, George Stubbs National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

August 21, 2023

Painting the unfamiliar: why the first European paintings of Australian animals look so alien to our eyes

Janelle Evans, The University of Melbourne

How did George Stubbs, one of England’s foremost painters of horses and dogs, get Australian animals so wrong?

WikiCommons/Illustration by Samuel Atkins

February 3, 2022

Has Captain Cook’s ship Endeavour been found? Debate rages, but here’s what’s usually involved in identifying a shipwreck

John McCarthy, Flinders University

I have worked on many shipwreck investigations and have been involved in the discovery of a couple of shipwreck sites of this period. Here’s what’s usually involved in identifying a ship.

Uncle Fred Deeral as little old man in the film The Message, by Zakpage, to be shown at the National Museum of Australia in April. Nik Lachajczak of Zakpage

April 28, 2020

An honest reckoning with Captain Cook’s legacy won’t heal things overnight. But it’s a start

Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation

An honest reckoning with Captain Cook’s legacy won’t heal things overnight. But it’s a start The Conversation41.4 MB (download)

The impact of 1770 has never eased for Aboriginal people. It was a collision of catastrophic proportions.

A scene from the author’s film The Message, commissioned by the National Museum of Australia. At the first encounter in Botany Bay, two Gweagal warriors threw stones and spears at Cook, saying ‘warrawarrawa’, meaning ‘they are all dead’. Nik Lachajczak of Zakpage

April 28, 2020

‘They are all dead’: for Indigenous people, Cook’s voyage of ‘discovery’ was a ghostly visitation

Alison Page, University of Technology Sydney

Incidents from Cook’s first voyage highlight themes relevant in Indigenous-settler relations today: environmental care, reconciliation and governance. This collision of beliefs, it seems, wasn’t lost on Cook.

Nicholas Chevalier, Mallee scrub, Murray River, NSW, watercolour, 1871. National Library of Australia

March 26, 2019

When we celebrate Captain Cook’s voyage, let’s mark the epic journey of a Wati Wati man also

Stephen Morey, La Trobe University

Captain Cook’s 1770 voyage is well known. But at this time, Indigenous Australians also travelled great distances - let’s recognise this in the 2020 commemorations.

A replica of HMB Endeavour in 2011. Ellie Shaw

September 19, 2018

As we celebrate the rediscovery of the Endeavour let’s acknowledge its complicated legacy

Natali Pearson, University of Sydney

As the first European seafaring vessel to reach the east coast of Australia, the Endeavour – much like James Cook himself – has become part of Australia’s national mythology.

Aboriginal elder Major Sumner sits outside Liverpool’s World Museum with a box containing the skull of an Australian indigenous person, taken from Australia between 1902 and 1904. Phil Noble/Reuters

December 1, 2016

Museums are returning indigenous human remains but progress on repatriating objects is slow

Myles Russell Cook, The University of Melbourne and Lynette Russell, Monash University

The question of repatriating objects is clearly more complex than returning human remains. It needs more debate, and more creative interventions to move beyond the current impasse.

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