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
James Gibson (seaman) James Gibson (seaman) James Gibson (1700 – 1752) was a British ship Captain who became a merchant in the British Colonies of Jamaica and the Province of Massachusetts Bay. During King George's War(1744–1748), William Shirley, the Governor of Massachusetts, debated whether to siege and capture the French Fortress of Louisburg on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. According to Gibson's journal, he convinced Governor Shirley that the siege would be successful, and used his personal wealth to provide three hundred soldiers for the campaign. Gibson wrote an account of the Siege of Louisburg and it was published in London in late