Captain Cook’s HMS Endeavour will belong to the US if wreck is found in their waters Nearly 250 years after it was sunk during the American Revolutionary War, experts believe they have located the legendary HMS […]

Nearly 250 years after it was sunk during the American Revolutionary War, experts believe they have located the legendary HMS Endeavour, the ship captained by the explorer James Cook when he claimed Australia for the British.

Researchers think they have pinpointed the 18th-century vessel at a site off Newport Harbour in the US state of Rhode Island.

But if the team, headed by the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project, is correct, and one of the five wrecks on the site turns out to be the famous ship, legal loopholes mean that Britain will find it “very problematic” to try to stake its claim on the vessel that played an integral role in the nation’s history.

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Legal action

In 1999, the state of Rhode Island went to the federal court in Providence to claim possession of all shipwrecks in the harbour, a legal action known as “arresting”.

The court agreed to the request, which named the state as the owner of the wrecks within the area concerned. It did this after a marine archaeologist, Kathy Abbass, warned that divers or a commercial salvage company could get to the Endeavour first.

Dennis Nixon, an expert in marine and coastal law at the University of Rhode Island, said this form of legislation dated back to the colonial era when ships were used as a form of security if money was owed for repairs, supplies or other fees.

“If you had a claim against the ship, you wanted to press your claim before it left your jurisdiction,” he added. “They had to have some security, and the security was the ship itself.”

‘Very problematic’

But Rhode Island asked the court to use its admiralty and maritime jurisdiction to secure the wrecks and declare the state the owner.

This, said Kevin Sumption, director of the Australian National Maritime Museum, made it “inappropriate and indeed very problematic” for the British or Australian governments to claim ownership.

The British consulate-general in Boston, which represents the UK Government in Rhode Island, did not comment.

Explorer Captain Cook

Captain Cook set sail on his first expedition in 1768, during which he went to Tahiti to watch the transit of Venus, sailed to New Zealand and then on to Australia’s east coast to claim the continent for Britain.

On his third expedition, in 1779, which was not on the Endeavour, he was stabbed and killed in Hawaii by a local tribesman.

The HMS Endeavour is believed to have been part of a fleet of 13 ships used by the British in 1778 to blockade Newport Harbour from the French.