Lerwick and back to Leith. Cook must have been relieved when he received a new posting in September.
A month later on his 27th birthday, 27th October, Cook boarded the new 24 gun HMS Pembroke as her master. Her captain, John Simcoe, was another who would take Cook under his wing, stimulating his hunger for knowledge and feeding him books. After a two month cruise patrolling a section of seascape that was becoming all too familiar, the Bay of Biscay, Pembroke was recalled to Portsmouth where a fleet was being assembled by Admiral Boscawen, Eagle commanded by Cook’s old captain Hugh Palliser among them. In company with eight line-of-battle-ships and transports led by Boscawen’s flagship Princess Amelia, one of whose passengers was brigadier James Wolfe who would become famous at Quebec, HMS Pembroke set sail on 22nd February 1758. Their destination was Nova Scotia to attack the French colony, part of New France. After calling at Tenerife and Bermuda, on reaching Halifax, Pembroke’s crew was riddled with sickness and she was
A map of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia some 25 years before the English attack in 1759. Although the community appears small, the amount of shipping present illustrates the vitality and industry of the community.
forced to linger in order to recruit more men to replace 26 who had died from scurvy, five deserters and others who had been hospitalised.
Some of Cook’s biographers state Pembroke’s delay in Halifax meant she arrived too late to be part of the action at the siege of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island while others, including the esteemed Cook Society, say Cook was present, but whether he and HMS Pembroke were there to see the last few days or not, a five week siege was laid to the French colony, whose fort’s strategic position guarded the entrance to the St Lawrence seaway, crucial for controlling access to Canada.