1728-1779
Navigator And Cartographer

Love of the Sea. The renowned navigator James Cook was born in Marton-in-Cleveland in Yorkshire on 27 October 1728. He was the second of the seven children of James Cook, an agricultural laborer, and his wife, Grace Pace. The Cooks were not able to afford to pay for an extended education for their children, but their employer funded young James Cook's basic education at Postgate school in Great Ayton, Yorkshire. After completing school, James Cook was apprenticed to a haberdasher in the small north Yorkshire fishing port of Staithes. Cook disliked shop work, finding his only pleasure watching the sea and fishing boats that plied Yorkshire's coastal waters. In July 1746, at the age of seventeen, Cook left Staithes for a new apprenticeship with the Walker family, shipowners, at the port of Whitby. Cook served his apprenticeship on colliers —large, slow-moving ships of three...