The Captain James Cook CNHP plaque is mounted on a stone block cairn in Fort Needham Memorial Park, southeast of the Halifax Explosion Memorial Bell Tower, which is at the highest point in the park, overlooking the harbour.
This is one of two CNHP plaques honoring Captain Cook, the other being in Corner Brook, Newfoundland.
Years before he sailed and charted the Pacific for the British Navy, meanwhile discovering New Zealand and many Pacific Islands, Cook charted the coasts of Quebec, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia while stationed at the British Naval Harbour at Halifax. The first Royal Dockyard in British North America, it was created in 1758, under the supervision of Captain James Cook, who also supervised the erection of the first buildings. In 1905 the British left the dockyard and it was transferred to Canada five years later.
This harbour, by the way, was the scene of the largest man made pre-nuclear explosion on the morning of December 6, 1917, when the French munitions ship Mont-Blanc, laden with a cargo of benzol, gun cotton, picric acid and TNT collided with the Belgian relief ship Imo, exploding shortly after at 9:04:35 A.M. The explosion levelled much of Halifax and Dartmouth, killing 1,963 and injuring a further 9,000 people.
The CNHS plaque reads as follows:
CAPTAIN JAMES COOK (1728-1779)
Before the voyages that brought him world fame as Captain Cook, this British Royal Navy officer compiled navigational charts for the coasts of Quebec and Nova Scotia. While based in Halifax from 1758 to 1762, he learned triangulation and other valuable skills, which later enabled him to produce the first scientific, large-scale hydrographic survey of the dangerous coast of Newfoundland. His charts were to remain standard for a century. Cook's masterful work prompted the Admiralty to choose him to lead three voyages to the Pacific, where his superior skills yielded a rich legacy of scientific and geographical knowledge.