Visit theEsk Valley

History & heritage ยท Whitby

Captain Cook Memorial Museum

The 17th-century house where the young James Cook lodged as an apprentice, now a museum of his life and voyages.

Photo: aude, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In 1746 the teenage James Cook came to Whitby to learn seamanship with the Quaker shipowner John Walker, lodging in the attic of Walker's house on Grape Lane. That house is now the Captain Cook Memorial Museum, with rooms furnished as they would have been in Cook's day and collections of letters, charts, models and objects from his three great voyages of exploration.

All of Cook's ships, including the Endeavour, were Whitby-built colliers, and the town's connection with him is celebrated with a statue on West Cliff looking out to sea.

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