I visited Endeavour the first day it was on show at Newport, Rhode Island. We toured her for about 3 hours with no more than about 30 visitors on board at any time. It was in Newport for 16 days and average about 400 visitors per day. At that level there was plenty of room to photograph anything.
The interest in the newspapers has been very small and the Co-sponsors National Geographic Society don't appear to be going out of their way to do local promotions. I recommended that the Replica web site should not only advertise the times of visits but also the wharf she would dock at. For Newport I searched the local city web site and found her visit their was coupled with IYRS (International Yacht Restoration School). I searched IYRS and finally found an address in a job offer they had on the web. 10 days before she was due in Boston I emailed the Replica office in the USA and asked where she would be docking. The day before she was due in Boston they replied. I could have passed information to local papers if they had made an effort to reply sooner!
I went down to the wharf on the day of her arrival and watched her enter the harbour about 10 am lead by the Boston fireboat and followed by a similarly rigged vessel Rose plus quite a few private boats of al kinds. They sailed right up the harbour to the US Constitution which was saluted with cannons. She return to the central harbour and docked at the New England Aquarium wharf. It was a lovely sunny day but rather hazy so only a few of my pictures showed her well. She docked a little after noon and a welcome ceremony included the Captain, the Mayor of Boston (USA), the Mayor of Boston (UK), the national President of the Australia & New Zealand Chamber of Commerce, the Honorary Australian consul in Boston MA, and the President of the NE Aquarium. They all talked and presented each other gifts on the narrow and crowded wharf.
On the first Saturday in Boston I again visited for about 4 hours taking photographs of things I had missed in Newport. I ended up with about 100 pictures, most of them good, both above and below decks. On the next Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday I was a volunteer guide for 6 hours each day. The crowds were no more dense than those at Newport so there was plenty of time to discuss and explain the voyage to the visitors. Most were very interested in learning about Cook and very many happened on it by chance as the local "see the whales" boats departed from the same wharf. Many were surprised at the small mention in the local papers.
I spent most of my time below decks at the galley, crew quarters, officer's lower deck, and the officer's mess and the Great Cabin on the after fall. The Captain, Chris Blake, was around most of the time. He said that to break even they needed about 1000 visitors per day, but that more than about 1500 per day became too crowded. I guess that was a small fraction of the crowds that showed up in the UK. It was such a great pleasure to see Endeavour and it's now very much easier to visualize what the life was like in reading along with Cook's and Banks' Journals.
Brian Sandford