H.M.S. Endeavour Under Attack?

The story of the shipwreck in Narragansett Bay that’s probably, but not officially, H.M.S. Endeavour continued this month as the Boston Globe reported that the remains are being eaten away.

Brian Amaral has been covering this story, and in this latest installment he described how Reuben Shipway came from the University of Plymouth to investigate the biology of the wreck (in cooperation with local authorities).

Not only did Shipway find naval shipworms, or Teredo navalis, in wood brought up from the seafloor, but “He saw larvae on their gills — that meant they were breeding.” Indeed, shipworm might share responsibility for only about 10–15% of the warship remaining.

What’s more, “Shipway found evidence that a crustacean species called gribbles had eaten at the wood from the outside, a sort of two-pronged attack that will, in time, eat anything that’s exposed to water until it’s gone.” While the material is safer when buried in sediment, currents in the bay and warming water mean that underwater environment will always be changing.

Shipway also examined his samples for evidence of species from distant oceans, which would add to the evidence that this particular wreck is the Endeavour, later renamed H.M.S. Lord Sandwich. None came to light, but Australian archeologists are already convinced.

There remains the big question of who wants to fund further exploration and any attempts at preservation. The ship came from the British navy. It’s in U.S. waters. In world history, it’s most significant as the vessel that brought Capt. James Cook and the British to Australia, and that country is most interested in it.

Meanwhile, the shipworms and gribbles are still living their lives.

“Their belief that the peace was not the king’s to keep”

Lisa Ford’s The King's Peace: Law and Order in the British Empire was published last year by Harvard University Press. It looks at changes in how the British government sought to keep the peace in its empire by changing its fundamental rules.

Ford built the book around five case studies, starting in the province of Massachusetts and then moving on to Canada, Jamaica, Bengal, and New South Wales.

In a review for H-Net (P.D.F. download), Dana Rabin writes:

Boston’s Liberty Riot in 1768 illustrates the disorders faced by agents of empire in the run up to the American Revolution. Riot and threats of violence from white colonists revealed the weakness of the Crown and the powerlessness of the king’s agents to enforce the peace. Residents of Massachusetts justified their intimidation and threats of violence with their belief that the peace was not the king’s to keep but rather that of white, Protestant men in the name of the people. Ford calls this “the end of empire.”

The book proceeds to reconstruct what Ford considers the ramifications of the American Revolution to the legal history of empire, attributing to Parliament and British colonial officials a new resolve to buttress the king’s power and prerogative against similar future threats. In the period after the American Revolution, the Crown accrued great powers by Acts of Parliament that increased the power of governors and decreased the power of legislative bodies or eliminated them entirely. Judges appointed by the Crown and supervised from London enhanced Crown control over colonial legal systems. The Crown’s expanded power was often framed as a duty to protect.

The focus of chapter 2 is Quebec where white Protestant men again resisted the military rule installed upon British victory in the city in 1759. British Protestant merchants resented any limits to their participation in the fur trade and objected to any concession of rights to French Catholics. Ford argues that in response to their ungovernability and Catholic vulnerability, the Quebec Act of 1774 created a Crown colony in Quebec, granting the governor expanded powers to rule without a legislative body. Even after the creation of the elected assemblies of Upper and Lower Canada in 1791, legislation was subject to the approval of an appointed upper house and gubernatorial veto.

Starting in the 1760s, Massachusetts Whigs feared that Parliament wanted to take more control over the colony. British leaders felt that Massachusetts was trying to operate outside of legal bounds. With each new law, the Whigs felt their warnings were vindicated. With each new resolution or riot protesting a new law, London administrators felt their wish for stronger authority was vindicated. The result was a spiral of resentment and suspicion that no one could resolve.