The Captain Cook Memorial Museum

The Captain Cook Memorial Museum opened in 1987 in Walker’s House, Whitby.   The house was the home of three generations of the ship-owning Walker family to whom the young James Cook was apprenticed.

The initial collection was formed from purchases, from loans from other museums and from private donations.   Acquisitions have been made over the years and continue to be made whenever opportunity arises.   There is now a significant collection including a unique collection of original letters relating to Cook and his associates, maps, Pacific artifacts,  and original paintings -  Hodges, Gainsborough, Russell, Webber are represented - supplemented by period prints and furniture, and ship models.   The collection illustrates the life of Captain Cook, his crews and the artists and scientists who sailed with him.   In 2004, the library was given a collection of nearly two hundred antiquarian books of travel, many of them first editions, by Sir Robert Clark.

In 2005 the Museum won its section of Yorkshire Tourist Board’s White Rose Awards - Visitor Attractions with under 100,000 visitors;   also the similar honour in Scarborough Borough’s Yorkshire Coast Awards.

The Captain Cook Memorial Museum prepare and mount exhibitions about topics related to Cook and his associates. A new exhibition is displayed each year in the attic at the top of the main museum building. Exhibits normally  include artefacts loaned by major museums, and brought to Whitby specially for the exhibition.   This is often material of national significance which would not normally be seen in the North of England.  For 2007 the exhibition will be “Botanical Endeavours ! Sir Joseph Banks and his legacy.”

Sir Joseph Banks, sailed on Cook’s first voyage on the Endeavour as botanist and collector.  The voyage was a key point in Banks’ career and in forming his ideas about identifying plants, the best way of collecting and transporting them, and how to naturalise them in different parts of the world.  Within a short space of time Banks was at the heart of an empire of botanical discovery, cultivation and exchange.  He became adviser to King George III, directing activities at Kew Gardens, turning it into an international centre for plants and their cultivation.

With the help of generous loans from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the Natural History Museum and others, the exhibition brings together personal items belonging to Banks - his travelling chair and walking stick made from sugar cane - and explores the legacy of his long and energetic life.  What Pacific plants were brought back, how were they transported across the oceans, and how have these influenced our gardens today?   There will also be a display of  historic gardening tools and the courtyard garden will have some examples of plants from the Pacific and elsewhere that came to this country through Banks and his collectors.

March - October : open daily

Telephone 01947 601900