Sailing north along an uncharted coast, Cook had no idea he had entered a maze of reefs. The crew threw about 50 tons of ballast, stores and six cannon overboard to lighten the ship, and after 23 hours she floated off on the tide. They then fothered the hull, drawing a sail covered in oakum and wool beneath it to plug the hole. Cook beached Endeavour at the mouth of a river, where repairs took seven weeks. The site is now Cooktown, Queensland.
Endeavour had left Plymouth in 1768 to observe the transit of Venus from Tahiti and then search for a southern continent. In April 1770 Cook reached the east coast of Australia and sailed north, charting as he went. He did not know that the Great Barrier Reef was closing in toward the coast.
On the night of June 11, in moonlight and with a leadsman sounding, the depth suddenly dropped from 17 fathoms, and the ship struck coral. As the tide fell she lay pinned and grinding, with water pouring in. The crew worked the pumps in shifts and jettisoned everything heavy they could spare. When she floated free the next evening, a large chunk of coral remained lodged in the hole, which saved the ship.
During the repairs on the Endeavour River, the naturalist Joseph Banks and his team collected hundreds of plants, and the crew saw their first kangaroos. Guugu Yimithirr people met the sailors, a meeting marked by a dispute over turtles. In 1969 divers recovered the six cannon from the reef.
Key people: James Cook, Joseph Banks