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
British soldiers in the eighteenth century to captain and six years before becoming a major, improving the quality of the officers through the experience gained. During the 18th century the weapon of choice was the Brown Bess musket which had been used by the army since the 1730s. The pike had been replaced by the use of the musket in the early 18th century. There were many different patterns of musket fired during the 18th century, but the weapon normally favoured a flintlock mechanism which was more reliable than the preceding matchlock system used during the English Civil War in the 17th century. Bayonets were used