The Endeavour Strait is a strait

Strait

A strait or straits is a narrow, typically navigable channel of water that connects two larger, navigable bodies of water. It most commonly refers to a channel of water that lies between two land masses, but it may also refer to a navigable channel through a body of water that is otherwise not...

 running between the Australian mainland

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 and Prince of Wales Island, in the extreme south of the Torres Strait

Torres Strait

The Torres Strait is a body of water which lies between Australia and the Melanesian island of New Guinea. It is approximately wide at its narrowest extent. To the south is Cape York Peninsula, the northernmost continental extremity of the Australian state of Queensland...

. It was named in 1770 by explorer James Cook

James Cook

Captain James Cook, FRS, RN was a British explorer, navigator and cartographer who ultimately rose to the rank of captain in the Royal Navy...

, after his own vessel, The Endeavour, and he used the strait as passage out to the Indian Ocean

Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...

 on his voyage.

The Endeavour Strait is approximately thirty statute miles (50 km) in length from its northernmost tip to its southern extremities, and varies from two to six miles (3 to 10 km) in breadth. It is, on average, between seven and eight fathom

Fathom

A fathom is a unit of length in the imperial and the U.S. customary systems, used especially for measuring the depth of water.There are 2 yards in an imperial or U.S. fathom...

s (15 m) deep, and its sandy floor is carpetted with a moderately thick layer of coral

Coral

Corals are marine animals in class Anthozoa of phylum Cnidaria typically living in compact colonies of many identical individual "polyps". The group includes the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and secrete calcium carbonate to form a hard skeleton.A coral "head" is a colony of...

. The strait is generally safe to travel through, and is not littered with any major sunken dangers or foul ground, although, for larger vessels, there is potential danger at the strait's western end, at the point that it connects with the Arafura Sea

Arafura Sea

The Arafura Sea lies west of the Pacific Ocean overlying the continental shelf between Australia and New Guinea.-Geography:The Arafura Sea is bordered by Torres Strait and through that the Coral Sea to the east, the Gulf of Carpentaria to the south, the Timor Sea to the west and the Banda and Ceram...

, where the depth of the water is only around three fathoms (5 m).

The danger that this shallow western point presents was a barrier that the Dutch explorers of Australia never overcame in their earlier sea explorations of the region. If they had been able to pass through the Endeavour Strait at the time, it is likely they would have discovered eastern Australia approximately one hundred and fifty years before the British

Kingdom of Great Britain

The former Kingdom of Great Britain, sometimes described as the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain', That the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England, shall upon the 1st May next ensuing the date hereof, and forever after, be United into One Kingdom by the Name of GREAT BRITAIN. was a sovereign...

 did, in 1770, as the Dutch had been successful in mapping the most of the west coast of Australia during the early 17th century following Willem Janszoon

Willem Janszoon

Willem Janszoon , Dutch navigator and colonial governor, is probably the first European known to have seen the coast of Australia. His name is sometimes abbreviated to Willem Jansz....

's sighting of the Cape York Peninsula

Cape York Peninsula

Cape York Peninsula is a large remote peninsula located in Far North Queensland at the tip of the state of Queensland, Australia, the largest unspoilt wilderness in northern Australia and one of the last remaining wilderness areas on Earth...

in 1606.

The shallow western end was also responsible for the wrecking of a cutter, the America, in 1844. All on board were killed, except Scottish woman Barbara Thompson. Thompson was rescued by the islanders living on Prince of Wales Island, the Kaurareg, with whom she lived for five years.

Today, the strait is travelled sparsely by passing small vessels, and its western side is often used as a bank for these ships. Due to the relatively shallow average depth of the strait, especially at its westernmost extremities, and the dangers that this presents, there have been recent calls for the body to be deepened, but there are no plans for this at the present time.