Captain Cook's ship HMS Endeavour found

by Hannah Thomas-Peter on 5 May 2016 Captain James Cooks famous Whitby CAT may be in Rhode Island, according to Marine archaeologists in Providence, who believe they may have located the wreckage. Scientists have been trawling the ocean floor around the coast of Providence for decades.

They knew Endeavour was likely to be one of 13 ships scuttled in 1778 by the British navy in order to blockade a channel during the American War of Independence. However, after they uncovered new documents from the National Archives in the UK, the research team were able to narrow down the location of the Endeavour to within a two square mile area of ocean off the coast of Newport harbour.

The marine archaeologists believe there are five ships there, four of which they have already mapped. Now the search is on to find the fifth wreck, which will be followed by intensive work to prove which of the five ships is Endeavour. Lead investigator Dr Kathy Abbass told Sky News: 'We may have been looking right at her without even knowing it.

'The important thing now is to get the funding so that we can build the facilities to process and house all of the artefacts we must examine to prove which one of the wrecks is Endeavour'. Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission Charlotte Taylor said: 'It really isn't easy to explore these sites. It takes time, money and effort at each step.'

'Divers battle very poor visibility and lots of silt, which is hard to remove and risky to do, because it has essentially been protecting the wood of these ships for hundreds of years.' The group from the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project hopes to have found and explored the fifth site by this summer.

The Endeavour is one of the most famous ships in naval history. Captain James Cook sailed her to Australia and New Zealand in 1768.

Upon her return to England she was renamed as Lord Sandwich and sold, before eventually being used as a transport ship by the British navy.

Yorkshire-born Captain Cook mapped lands from the Antipodes to the Americas during three voyages before he was killed in Hawaii in a fight with natives in 1779.