Joseph Banks – In Australiamight save prepared myself for the worst ... If (as was probable) she should make more
water when hauled off she must sink, and we well knew that our boats were not capable of
carrying us all ashore, so that some, probably the most of us, must be drowned.After lightening the ship of its ballast, guns and other materials the Endeavour
floated off on the next high tide and to their great relief the pumps were still capable
of holding the leak. The next day some of the crew hauled a spare sail under the boat,
in a process known as fothering, while adding some miscellaneous plugging material
(oakum, wool and sheep dung) to try and stop the leak. This was remarkably effective
and within an hour the water level in the Endeavour was almost completely down.
Banks was much relieved and impressed with the actions of the captain, officers and
crew as he wrote:
During the whole of this distress I must say for the credit of our people that I believe every
man exerted his utmost for the preservation of the ship, contrary to what I have universally
heard to be the behaviour of sea men who have commonly, as soon as a ship is in a desperate
situation, began to plunder and refuse all commands. This was no doubt owing to the cool
and steady conduct of the officers, who during the whole time never gave an order which
did not show them to be perfectly composed and unmoved by the circumstances howsoever
dreadful they might appear.Cook sent the pinnace ahead to try and find a suitable landing place where they
could inspect and repair the damage, or if necessary build a vessel which would
carry some of the crew to the East Indies for help. Banks describes the discovery of
Endeavour River as almost providential for the winds had started to blow and the ship
may have sunk had she stayed out a day longer:
The Captain and myself went ashore to view the Harbour and found it indeed beyond our
most sanguine wishes: it was the mouth of a river the entrance of which was to be sure
narrow enough and shallow, but once in the ship might be moored afloat so near the shore
... that all her Cargo might be got out and in again in a very short time.After careening the Endeavour, an inspection of her hull found a hole large enough
to have sunk the ship, but providence had worked in their favour as the hole had been
plugged with a piece of coral as big as a man’s fist. Sydney Parkinson wrote that:
‘the same rock, therefore, that endangered us, yielded us the principle means of our
redemption; for, had not this fragment not intruded into the leak, in all probability the
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