From the Records of the Survey Office, List of H.M.  Navy, 1771 to 1776, it has been ascertained that her price was 2,800 pounds, and the cost of fitting her for the voyage was 2,294 pounds.  The reason she was named officially either the Bark Endeavour or Endeavour Bark, was that there was another Endeavour in the Navy, stationed at that time at the Nore.  Kippis says that Pallisser was entrusted with the selection of the ship, and that he called on Cook for assistance in the matter, and the fact that a Whitby-built ship was chosen, of a kind in which Cook had had considerable experience, adds to the probability of his statement.  Dalrymple enters a claim, in letters to Dr. Hawkesworth, to having chosen the Endeavour for the voyage, but as she was not ordered to be surveyed, with a view to purchase, till 23rd March, when it was well-known the Admiralty had refused to allow him the command of the expedition, there is little force in his claim.

Copper sheathing.

Admiral Wharton assumes that as Cook expresses himself averse from having exploring ships sheathed in copper, owing to the difficulty of making repairs in case of accident far from proper facilities, and from the frequent mention of “heeling and boot-topping” in the Journal of the Endeavour, it is most probable that she was sheathed in wood.  This assumption is correct, for there is no mention of copper sheathing in the Surveyor’s books, nor at the time of her being repaired at the Endeavour River, nor at Batavia, when it is impossible that any account of her damaged bottom could be given without the mention of copper if any such sheathing had been used.  The Naval Chronicle says the first ship of the Royal Navy to be sheathed with copper was the Alarm frigate in 1758; and it is also said that the Dolphin, the ship in which Captain Wallis sailed round the world, was the only coppered ship in the service at this time, and she remained the only one for some years.

On 5th May, at a Council Meeting of the Royal Society, Captain John Campbell, R.N., proposed that Cook, who was in attendance, and had been appointed by the Admiralty to the command of the Endeavour, was a fit and proper person to be one of the observers for the Society in the Southern Seas.  Cook was called in, and accepted the position in consideration of such a gratuity as the Society should think proper, and an allowance of 120 pounds per year “for victualling himself and another observer in every particular.”  Mr. Green was also called in, and accepted the place as the other observer for the gratuity of 200 guineas for the two years the voyage was expected to take, and at the rate of 100 guineas a year afterwards.  A list of the instruments to be supplied by the Society was also prepared at the same meeting, and the workmen engaged on them were ordered to show them to Messrs. Green and Cook, and give any desired information.  A portable observatory, said to have been designed