Before the museum, there was an urn. In 1858, the Middlesbrough industrialist and former mayor Henry Bolckow erected a pink granite urn in what is now Stewart Park, on the site of the lost Cook cottage. The inscription read that the urn marked the place where Captain James Cook the world circumnavigator was born. Bolckow had built Marton Hall on the adjacent land in 1859, the kind of grand industrial-fortune country house that the Tees ironworks barons of the nineteenth century put up everywhere. Marton Hall was destroyed by fire in 1960 during demolition, leaving only a stone loggia. The urn is still there. It is a grade II listed monument, a quiet Victorian gesture toward a man Middlesbrough has always claimed as its most famous son.

Cook's first voyage on HMS Endeavour, from 1768 to 1771, observed the transit of Venus from Tahiti, then charted the coast of New Zealand and the eastern coast of Australia. His second voyage, on HMS Resolution from 1772 to 1775, circled deep into Antarctic waters, disproving theories of a vast southern continent. His third voyage, from 1776, searched for a Northwest Passage from the Pacific side, made first European contact with the Hawaiian Islands, then returned south. On 14 February 1779, Cook came ashore at Kealakekua Bay attempting to take the high chief Kalaniopuu hostage after the theft of a ship's boat. The plan collapsed into violence. Cook was struck down at the water's edge by Hawaiian warriors and killed. Four of his marines died with him.

The voyages did extraordinary scientific work. Cook's charts of New Zealand and eastern Australia were astonishingly accurate. Joseph Banks brought back botanical specimens that transformed European science. The transit of Venus observation contributed to the first reliable measurement of the distance from Earth to the Sun. The same voyages also opened doors that European colonisers would walk through with consequences the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific are still living with. Australia's First Nations communities were dispossessed of their land. Hawaiian sovereignty was eventually destroyed. Māori, Tahitian, and Tongan societies were transformed by contact, disease, and missions. Cook himself was neither the cruellest of European captains nor an innocent observer. The museum, opened in 1978 and refurbished in 1998 with new artworks by Turner Prize nominee Simon Patterson, attempts to survey the whole, including the death at Kealakekua.

The museum sits in Stewart Park, named for Dormund Stewart, the Middlesbrough councillor who gave the land to the town in 1928. The park's grounds were once the gardens of Marton Hall, and the surviving stone loggia from the destroyed mansion still stands. Inside the museum, displays survey Cook's life, his three voyages, and his death, along with a speculative reconstruction of the kind of cottage he was born in. There are interactive exhibits, temporary travelling exhibitions, a cafe, gift shop, and education suite. Sir David Attenborough reopened the museum after its 1998 refurbishment. The site also serves as the starting point for the Captain Cook Country Tour, which links the places in the region associated with Cook's early life: Marton, Great Ayton where the family moved when he was eight, and Whitby where he learned his trade at sea.

Captain Cook Birthplace Museum is at 54.54 N, 1.20 W in Stewart Park in the Marton area of southern Middlesbrough. From the air, look for the green expanse of Stewart Park surrounded by the suburban development that absorbed Marton village in the 1950s and 60s. The River Tees runs about three miles north. Teesside International Airport (EGNV) is about 10 miles south-west. The Cleveland Hills rising sharply to the south make a clear horizon backdrop. Best viewing is from 1,500 to 3,000 feet AGL. Stewart Park, the museum building, and the loggia ruin can all be picked out on a clear day, with Roseberry Topping's distinctive cone visible to the south-east.