assist in rigging and fitting for sea a vessel, called the
Three Brothers, some 600 tons burden, which was still in existence
towards the close of last century. When she was completed, Cook made two
or three trips in her with coals, and then she was employed for some
months as a transport for troops from Middleburg to Dublin and Liverpool.
She was paid off by the Government at Deptford in the spring of 1749, and
then traded to Norway, during which time Cook completed his
apprenticeship, that is, in July 1749. Cook told the naturalist of the
second South Sea voyage, Mr. Forster, that on one of his trips to Norway
the rigging of the ship was completely covered with birds that had been
driven off the land by a heavy gale, and amongst them were several hawks
who made the best of their opportunities with the small birds.

OFFERED COMMAND.

When his apprenticeship had expired he went before the mast for about
three years. In 1750 he was in the Baltic trade on the Maria, owned by
Mr. John Wilkinson of Whitby, and commanded by Mr. Gaskin, a relative of
the Walkers. The following year he was in a Stockton ship, and in 1752 he
was appointed mate of Messrs. Walker's new vessel, the Friendship, on
board of which he continued for three years, and of which, on the
authority of Mr. Samwell, the surgeon of the Discovery on the third
voyage, who paid a visit to Whitby on his return and received his
information from the Walkers, he would have been given the command had he
remained longer in the mercantile marine. This was rapid promotion for a
youth with nothing to back him up but his own exertions and strict
attention to duty, and tends to prove that he had taken full advantage of
the opportunities that fell in his way, and had even then displayed a
power of acquiring knowledge of his profession beyond the average.

About this time Cook's father seems to have given up his position at Airy
Holme Farm and turned his attention to building. A house in Ayton is
still pointed out as his work, but has apparently been partially rebuilt,
for Dr. Young speaks of it as a stone house, and it is now partly brick,
but the stone doorway still remains, with the initials J.G.C., for James
and Grace Cook, and the date 1755. The old man has been represented as
completely uneducated, but this cannot have been true. Colman in his
Random Recollections, writing of a visit he paid to Redcar about 1773,
relates how a venerable old man was pointed out who:

"