A Yorkshireman who was to change the face of the known world in the eighteenth century. Captain James Cook was a Whitby lad. It should be no surprise then that he should feel his future lay with the sea. It was the eighteenth century and the western European powers had expanded their explorations far beyond the 'New World' and 'the Indies' into the mighty Pacific. The largest Ocean in the world held a fascination for Cook and he was commissioned to explore it in the 'HMS Endeavour'. His discoveries around Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific region are legendary. His death, at the hands of Hawaiian natives in 1779, brought an all too prolific life of exploration to a bloody end. It is said that Cook was held in such esteem that even those who had murdered him gave him what they considered to be a funeral fit for one of their own chieftains.