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James Cook was born on 27 October 1728, the son of a casual farm labourer who had worked his way up to Overseer, and his wife Grace. The couple had married in nearby Stainton, and the family had eight children, four of which died in infancy. Only James, their second child, and his two sisters Christina and Margaret survived into adulthood, and the register entry of their baptism can still be seen in the local church of St Cuthbert's now. James was also employed as a farm labourer too, in the village of Great Ayton, and then moved on to work as a grocer's assistant in Staithes. He then relocated to Whitby, finding work at the age of 18 in a Collier sailing out of the town's harbour.
During the war with the French in 1755, James Cook enlisted as an Able Seaman on HMS Eagle. After a month he secured promotion to Master's Mate. Four years later he was promoted to Master. Once Captain of his own ship, he progressed to chart the St. Lawrence River in Canada, and was rewarded in 1763 with command of the schooner Grenville.
In 1768, Cook was chosen to lead an expedition to observe the transit of Venus, it was his first Pacific voyage. He rounded Cape Horn in the Whitby built bark Endeavour, reaching Tahiti on 3 June 1769. The Endeavour spent six months charting New Zealand, exploring and claiming possession of eastern Australia.
The Captain Cook Birthplace Museam was opened in 1978, in Stewart Park, Marton, and now houses an amzing insight into the world of James Cook. Set in a hundred acres of parkland with lakes and a children's zoo, the museum marks the site of Cook's birth just a few yards away. A granite vase now stands on the site of the cottage where he was born in 1728.
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