James Cook grocer and haberdasher William Sanderson. Historians have speculated that this is where Cook first felt the lure of the sea while gazing out of the shop window. After 18 months, not proving suitable for shop work, Cook travelled to the nearby port town of Whitby to be introduced to friends of Sanderson's, John and Henry Walker. The Walkers, who were Quakers, were prominent local ship-owners in the coal trade. Their house is now the Captain Cook Memorial Museum. Cook was taken on as a merchant navy apprentice in their small fleet of vessels, plying coal along the English coast. His
Bay d'Espoir world-renowned Captain James Cook (an enlarged version of the original map can currently be found on display in Bay d'Espoir). This map was made shortly after land agreements had been reached between the French and English during the mid to late 18th century. The English had acquired considerable French territory in close proximity to rich fishing grounds but with little of the coastline being well charted. Captain James Cook was hired by the English authorities to provide them with accurate, detailed maps of the coast so that they might better defend it, should the French try to reclaim it as