ENDEAVOUR the ship that discovered NZ

The earliest historically is the Endeavour, the vessel used by Captain Cook on his first voyage to New Zealand.

When the Endeavour sailed from England in August 1768, she carried 96 men, crew, and civilians. When she returned three years later, the number was 90,

On the morning of 9 December 1995 the replica of the Endeavour entered Auckland harbour at the start of a three month visit to New Zealand.Auckland's morning paper marked the occasion with an advertising supplement the previous day, and on the day itself had beautiful coloured photos of the Endeavour on its front and back pages. Several shipping companies ran special "Welcome the Endeavour" trips.

The Wellington Branch of the New Zealand Antarctic Society commemorated the 50th anniverasay of the sailing of HMNZS Endeavour for Antarctica with the unveiling of a palque in Frank Kitt's Park on 15 December 2006.

His Majesty's Bark Endeavour was a 10-gun Royal Navy bark commanded by Lieutenant James Cook on his first voyage of discovery, to Australia and New Zealand in 1769-71.

Launched in 1764 as the collier Earl of Pembroke, she was purchased by the Navy in 1768 for a scientific mission to the Pacific Ocean, and to explore the seas for the postulated Terra Australis Incognita or "unknown southern land." Renamed and commissioned as His Majesty's Bark the Endeavour, she departed Plymouth in August 1768, rounded Cape Horn and reached Tahiti in time to observe the 1769 transit of Venus across the Sun. She then set sail into the largely uncharted ocean to the south, stopping at the Pacific islands of Huahine, Borabora, Raiatea and Rurutu to allow Cook to claim them for Great Britain. In September 1769 she anchored off New Zealand, the first vessel to reach the islands since Abel Tasman's Heemskerck 127 years earlier. In April 1770 the Endeavour became the first seagoing vessel to reach the east coast of Australia, when Cook went ashore at what is now known as Botany Bay.