However, life as a coal captain did not interest the twenty-seven year old James Cook. On June 17, 1755 he entered a Naval Recruiting Office near London and volunteered as an able seaman. .
Cook was assigned to the Eagle, a sixty-gun ship of the line. Most of the new recruits on the Eagle had no experience, and many of them had been gathered by the ill reputed Naval Press gangs. It was obvious to the Eagle's captain, Joseph Hamar, that Cook was no ordinary recruit. Standing more than six feet tall, with piercing eyes and a prominent brow, Cook displayed a spirit of authority (Day 43).
With the outbreak of the Seven Year's War, between England and France in 1756, the Eagle was assigned to blockade duty in the North Atlantic. It was there that Cook learned the discipline of long months at sea.
In 1758, having been promoted to Master, Cook sailed a sixty-four-gun ship, the Pembroke, across the Atlantic and started the work that would bring him to the attention of the Royal Navy's top command: the charting of the St Lawrence River in preparation for an assault on the French in Quebec. The French, ready to prevent the British fleet from gaining the river, had removed all of the marking buoys from the dangerously sand banked river. Cook accomplished his mission in spite of the French actions. In the summer and fall of 1759, the British ascended on the St. Lawrence, defeating the French.
In 1762 Cook married and set up a home a home in the Mile End Village, near London. There, he was assigned to the North Atlantic Station, devoting his summers to the charting of the Newfoundland shore. By now he was clearly marked for a promotion. One superior officer informed the British Admiralty that "from my experience of MR. Cook's genius and capacity, think him well qualified for the work he has performed, and for greater undertakings of the same kind." (Allen 112) Not much longer than those words were spoke, Cook was commanding the Grenville, a small surveying schooner, with a compliment of eighteen men (Allen 112).
