coast, about fourteen miles from Ayton and nine north-west of Whitby.

A year later Cook went, or ran away, to sea, shipping at Whitby on board
the Freelove, a collier belonging to the brothers Walker.

In this hard school Cook learnt his sailor duties. No better training
could have been found for his future responsibilities. Here he learnt to
endure the utmost rigours of the sea. Constant fighting with North Sea
gales, bad food, and cramped accommodation, taught him to regard with the
indifference that afterwards distinguished him, all the hardships that he
had to encounter, and led him to endure and persevere where others, less
determined or more easily daunted by difficulties, would have hurried on,
and left their work incomplete.

All details of Cook's life during his thirteen years in the merchant
service are lost: what voyages he made, how he fared, whether he advanced
in general knowledge, all is gone. The only fact known is that in May
1755, when Cook was twenty-seven years of age, and mate of a vessel of
Messrs. Walker, then in the Thames, he, to avoid the press, then active
on account of the outbreak of the war with France, volunteered on board
H.M.S. Eagle, of 60 guns, as an able seaman.

Captain Hugh Palliser, who succeeded to the command of this ship in
October, was certainly Cook's warmest patron, and it would appear that
Cook did work superior to that of an able seaman in the Eagle. Be that as
it may, all that is absolutely known is that that ship took her share of
the fighting at the taking of Louisbourg and elsewhere on the North
American and West Indian Station, and returned to England in 1759.

By Palliser's interest Cook was now appointed master of the Mercury. It