Endeavour

It's a verb, a noun, a ship, a space shuttle, a detective ... a beautiful word.  The synonyms are strive, seek, attempt, undertake, aspire, and aim.  To me, those words are just as important as words like succeed and win.  When you read biographies and stories of scientific or medical discoveries and such, it seems that it is often a case of getting it right that time, rather than getting it wrong ten times before that.  

Captain James Cook's ship was called The Endeavour.  Cook was an explorer, a navigator, cartographer and Captain in the Royal Navy.  In three voyages - the first on HMS Endeavour - he sailed across largely uncharted seas, and mapped lands from New Zealand and Australia to Hawaii, adding islands and coastlines to European maps for the first time.   Originally, in 1766 the Royal Society engaged Cook to travel to the Pacific Ocean to observe and record the transit of Venus across the Sun.  This reading enabled astronomers to find the distance of the Sun from the Earth, which then could be used as a unit of measurement in calculating the parameters of the universe.

The photo above shows the replica that the Australian Government and the Australian National Maritime Museum built of the bark Endeavour - http://www.anmm.gov.au    Add this to your bucket list!

-oOo-

The Space Shuttle Endeavour was named after Captain Cook's ship.  For the first time, an orbiter was named through a national competition involving students in elementary and secondary schools.  They were asked to select a name based upon an exploratory or research sea vessel.  NASA's website tells us that the Space Shuttle Endeavour's adventure began with a flawless liftoff in May 1992, beginning a journey filled with many firsts.  A primary assignment was to capture an orbiting, but not functioning, communications satellite and replace its rocket motor.  Unfortunately the Shuttle wasn't designed to retrieve the satellite, which created many challenges - an unprecedented three-person spacewalk took place.  In all, it was the first time four spacewalks were conducted on a mission and one of them was the longest in space history, lasting more than eight hours.

-oOo-

Endeavour is also the first name of Detective Morse - the TV series that actually makes you have to think about the clues as they're unravelled.  A good story, and set against a background of the beautiful city of Oxford - the City of Dreaming Spires.  Whether it's the new series, set in the 1960s, or the old series which was made in 1987-2000,  I really enjoy everything about it.  The locations, the story, the college background, the famous red jaguar, the interaction between the characters.  I'm also a big fan of the Inspector Lewis series, a spin off from the original Morse.   I get very homesick when I see the characters taking some time out for a pint in a local country pub, often sitting outside on a Summer evening, and just talking about the day  - or in this instance, the case.

I was going to add the story of Ernest Shackleton's voyage to the South Pole, but realized that his ship was called HMS Endurance.  Another great word, but one for another time.

-oOo-

Endeavour.

Something we all should be doing.

A favourite word.