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
RRS James Cook RRS James Cook The RRS "James Cook" is a British Royal Research Ship operated by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). She was built in 2006 to replace the ageing RRS "Charles Darwin" with funds from Britain's NERC and the DTI's Large Scientific Facilities Fund. She was named after Captain James Cook, the British explorer, navigator and cartographer at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton by HRH The Princess Royal. On her maiden scientific voyage, on 5 March 2007, "James Cook" was involved in the discovery of what is believed to be the world's deepest undersea volcanic vents, while in the