This narrow, redbrick house on Grape Lane was the home of Captain John Walker, a Quaker shipowner who took the teenage James Cook as an apprentice in 1746. Cook spent nine years sailing Walker's Whitby colliers up and down the North Sea, learning the navigation skills that would later carry him to Australia and Hawaii.
The museum keeps the original attic where the apprentices slept and rooms furnished in 18th-century style, mixed with maps, models, and letters relating to Cook's three Pacific voyages. The ships Endeavour, Resolution, Adventure and Discovery were all Whitby-built colliers. The museum is small but extremely well done — one of the best places in Britain to understand how a North Sea fishing town launched a Pacific explorer.