Captain Cook Memorial Museum him on as apprentice seaman for a three-year term. Cook served Walker first as apprentice, then as seaman and lastly as master’s mate until he joined the Royal Navy in 1755. He spent most of his time at sea on Walker’s colliers, mainly in the coal trade between the Tyne and London but including voyages to the Baltic and Dublin. The Whitby historian George Young, ‘Life of Cook’ 1836, stated that during Cook’s apprenticeship Walker retained Cook in Whitby on occasion and lodged him in the attic of the house in Grape Lane. There should be no difficulty in accepting
James Cook of his birthplace in Marton, by the opening of the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum, located within Stewart Park (1978). A granite vase just to the south of the museum marks the approximate spot where he was born. Tributes also abound in post-industrial Middlesbrough, including a primary school, shopping square and the "Bottle 'O Notes", a public artwork by Claes Oldenburg, that was erected in the town's Central Gardens in 1993. Also named after Cook is the James Cook University Hospital, a major teaching hospital which opened in 2003 with a railway station serving it called James Cook opening in 2014.