Captain Cook's Voyages Round the World With an Introductory Life (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Captain Cook's Voyages Round the World: With an Introductory Life
James Cook was born in the little village of Marton, on the edge of the Cleveland Hills, on October 27, 1728. His father, James Cook, was in the humble station of a "servant in husbandry." He married a woman of the same rank with himself, whose Christian name was Grace. Both of them were noted in their neighbourhood for their honesty, sobriety, and diligence. "The mud house in which Captain Cook drew his first breath" no longer exists, and the only relic of his childhood is a pump called "Captain Cook's pump," constructed, it is said, by his father. The first rudiments of young Cook's education were received by him at Marton, where he was taught to read by Dame Walker, the schoolmistress of the village.
When he was eight years old, his father, "in consequence of the character he had obtained for industry, frugality, and skill in husbandry," had a little promotion bestowed on him, and he removed with his family to the village of Great Ayton, some five miles from Marton. Here James was put to a day-school, where he was instructed in "writing, and in a few of the first rules of arithmetic." Before he was thirteen years of age, he was bound an apprentice to one Sanderson, a shopkeeper at Staithes, a considerable fishing village some nine miles north of Whitby.
No more unsuitable employment could have been found for the boy. To go to sea was the object of his life; and his passion for it must have been strengthened by the situation of the village in which he was placed, and the conversation of those amongst whom he was chiefly known.
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