Cook’s boat-builder
Picton family own a place in exploration history
The return of the Endeavour replica to New Zealand waters has special significance to Picton resident Tom Fishburn and his family.
His great-great-great-greatgrandfather, also Thomas Fishburn, owned the boat-yard in England that built Captain James Cook’s ship the HMS Endeavour, more than 250 years ago, and many of the ships Cook sailed around the world.
Yesterday, the Fishburns were given a tour of the replica Endeavour, which was in Picton for the Tuia 250 commemorations.
It was the first time Fishburn had seen the vessel.
‘‘It was unbelievable and a lot different to what I thought it would be like,’’ Fishburn said. ‘‘It’s reasonably sized but there’s not a lot of comfort.’’
He is matter-of-fact about his family’s place in history – he has wooden tools from the original Whitby shipyard ‘‘somewhere in the back shed’’.
But the seafaring legacy has continued through the generations. ‘‘Most of us have worked out at sea one way or another,’’ Fishburn said. ‘‘You could say it’s in our blood.’’
His youngest son, Stephen Fishburn, completed his boat building apprenticeship on The Legacy, launched by Tom Fishburn in December 2000.
Tom used it for commercial fishing, before Stephen used it as a charter boat.
Fishburn’s cousin
BarbaraAnne
Gledhill (nee Fishburn), said all three of her boys worked out at sea, too.
Tom’s oldest son, Andrew Fishburn, has visited Whitby, the Yorkshire town where Thomas Fishburn established his shipbuilding operations.
According to The Captain Cook Encyclopaedia, 18th century Whitby was a thriving port with multiple shipyards.
Known as a shipbuilding town, most of the vessels were used for timber and coal trading.
The Fishburns moved to New Zealand two generations ago, and Tom was born in Picton.
The Endeavour was initially used as a coal vessel known as the Earl of Pembroke. It was sold to the Royal
Navy, which recommissioned her as HM Bark Endeavour.
The Royal Navy appointed Cook to command a scientific expedition to the Pacific Ocean known as the voyage of discovery. In 1769, he anchored off New Zealand. During this visit, he initiated the first Ma¯oriEuropean interaction since Abel Tasman in 1642.
Writer and historian Peter Moore described Thomas
Fishburn as ‘‘a really interesting character’’.
‘‘He built all of Cook’s ships and therefore must be counted as perhaps one of the most significant figures in the history of British shipbuilding,’’ Moore said.
‘‘He turned Whitby into a sort of Georgian Cape Canaveral, a launch pad for voyages to places that, for Europeans, were indescribably distant.
‘‘The short version is that he was pragmatic, astute and successful as a shipbuilder.
‘‘He’s not really vivid to us today as a human character because there’s no pictorial representation and few descriptions of him, but he certainly contributed to New Zealand history with his ships.’’
Moore said Cook was an apprentice in Whitby where Fishburn lived and operated his business.
‘‘Cook learned how to sail on one side of the River Esk and Fishburn built the ships that would take him around the world on the other,’’ he said.
‘‘It’s a great coincidence of history that Cook and Fishburn’s Endeavour were flung together in 1768.’’
‘‘It was unbelievable and a lot different to what I thought it would be like.’’ Tom Fishburn
After Cook’s Pacific voyage, the Endeavour made three visits to the Falkland Islands between 1771 and 1775 but fell into ‘‘despair’’ in 1775 and was sold.
After being repaired in 1776, it was renamed Lord Sandwich and put into government service during the American War of Independence. It is understood the vessel sank near Newport Harbour in early August of 1778, but to this day no wreck has been found.
The Endeavour replica is a near-exact copy of the original vessel and was first launched on December 9, 1993.