Cannon from HMB Endeavour

In the evening of 10 June 1770, Captain James Cook’s Endeavour became stuck on a coral outcrop of the Great Barrier Reef off what is now Cooktown in far north Queensland. The journals of those on board record the nightmarish 24 hours that followed as the sails were got down and six cannons, thousands of gallons of water and tons of ballast were jettisoned to lighten the ship. The cannons were salvaged in 1969.