The ship Captain Cook used to 'discover' Australia may have been found— sunken in a U.S. harbor

A replica of Captain Cook's ship Endeavour at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney on Wednesday © Saeed Khan / AFP / Getty Images

More than two centuries ago, the British Royal Navy purchased a four-year-old merchant ship with a flat-bottomed hull that was ideal for transporting cargo.

The year was 1768. To the west, across the Atlantic Ocean, unrest was brewing among a group of British colonies — but the Royal Navy's newest acquisition was intended for decidedly scientific purposes.

The vessel would embark on an expedition to take British researchers to the South Pacific, with two goals: To observe Venus crossing the sun and to search for a continent called "Terra Australis Incognita," better known now as Australia. The Royal Navy spent weeks refitting the ship and soon renamed it the HMB Endeavour, a moniker suitable for its epic journey to come.

A 39-year-old naval officer and cartographer named James Cook was put in command of the Endeavour and, in August of 1768, the explorer and his crew set sail from Plymouth, England, on what would become the first of Cook's famed Pacific voyages.

For weeks, Cook and the Endeavour made their way slowly toward the Pacific, pushing south and west until they had cleared Cape Horn, at the southernmost tip of South America. They made it to Tahiti in April 1769, in time to document the Venus transit, and pressed on, mapping and exploring New Zealand and various Pacific islands along the way. A year later, they landed on the eastern coast of Australia.

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