“Cook and his men were the astronauts of the time,” declares Alan Eavis, a volunteer at the Captain Cook Memorial Museum in Whitby. “They ventured where very few sailors had gone before. The majority of them weren’t special people – they were just ordinary guys who did extraordinary things. During this 250th anniversary festival, young people will realise that we are all capable of that.”
Eavis is not the only one to be excited about the three-day seafaring extravaganza that the Yorkshire town is about to put on in honour of Captain James Cook.
In August 1768, the lowly son of a farmer set out in a ship built in Whitby on one of the most remarkable voyages ever made. When he returned three years later, he brought back the first charts of New Zealand and the east coast of Australia, having discovered numerous previously unknown Pacific islands, as well as more than 50,000 specimens of plants, animals and human artefacts.
Now, 250 years on from Cook’s landmark voyage on the HM Bark Endeavour, Whitby is to celebrate his life and achievements in a festival expected to attract 20,000 visitors.
“Cook was born in a mud hut, the lowest of the low,” says Eavis. “He knew little about sailing when he moved to the town aged 16, but nine years later he joined the royal navy. This boy came from nothing and here he was sailing the world. That is absolutely remarkable and there is no reason why young people today can’t do the same – that is why events like this are so important.”
Whitby lays claim to being one of the world’s greatest maritime centres and the connection to its seafaring past is instantly recognisable: a replica of the Endeavour – renovated for the celebrations by local entrepreneur Andrew Fiddler – dominates the skyline, and a statue of Cook sits prominently on a headland looking over the North Sea and the town.
Past the sweet and rock shops, down a cobbled street lies the Captain Cook museum. Taken in by John Walker, a Quaker master mariner, the young Cook spent nine years in this cottage learning mathematics, pilotage and the navigational skills that would enable him to become one of the world’s greatest explorers.
Eavis leads a tour of the house, showing off a boomerang and cannibal fork. Finishing off in the attic room where Cook would have slept, he says: “It is very important to Whitby because this is where he learned his naval skills. He knew little about sailing when he moved to the town. But within nine years he was in command of his own ship. ” He adds: “Without Whitby he would not have become the man that he did.”
Eavis’s views are shared by the festival’s music director, Richard Grainger. Sitting in the evening sunshine in Sanders Yard, a bustling music venue, Grainger says he too is hoping to inspire youngsters with a musical odyssey of shanties, haka – the Maori war cry – and a folk opera about the Endeavour voyage called Eye of the Wind. “Cook was the humble man who mastered the seas, a romantic, inspirational figure,” he says. “He was the common man who broke through class barriers. This is a story all our young people should know – a story we hope will make them believe they can also do anything.”
The Cook250 celebrations will begin on Friday 6 July with 450 children waving flags to welcome in Atyla, one of two tallships secured especially for the festival. On board the ship will be seven local children. The vessel will be accompanied by HMS Pickle, a replica of the messenger ship that brought back news of Admiral Lord Nelson’s death at the Battle of Trafalgar. The ships will be berthed in Whitby’s Dock End over the weekend alongside the replica of the Endeavour.
There will be talks, food trails and fireworks. And the Scarborough-based environmental arts organisation Invisible Dust will give a nod to the scientific and artistic achievements of Cook’s 1768 voyage with an Encounters exhibition which will look at the role of the botanists and artists who recorded new cultures and species.
Charles Forgan of the Captain Cook museum says: “In his day, Whitby was a place of adventure and promise, and a magnet for ambitious young men with hopes and dreams. This is exactly the kind of place that encouraged young men to look beyond the horizon, to push the boundaries of knowledge and science.
“It’s only as you discover the places that would have inspired Cook, where he grew up and trained, that you feel a connection to the real man and can start to understand what drove him.”
The Cook250 festival in Whitby runs from 6-8 July
