II.

Early Life and Seafaring Experience

The son of a farm worker, Cook was born in the rural village of Marton, in what was then the county of Yorkshire, England. At age 17 he moved to the coast, settling in the port town of Whitby, where he apprenticed himself to a merchant and shipowner. In 1755, with England on the verge of war with France (see Seven Years’ War), Cook enlisted in the British Royal Navy. Within two years he was master of a warship en route to Canada. There he began assisting an army surveyor assigned to map newly acquired territory. Cook’s aptitude for this work was evident to his superiors, and as a result he spent the rest of the war mapping Québec and the St. Lawrence River. After the war ended in 1763, the British government assigned Cook to map the coast of Newfoundland.