Three years later, on June 3, 1668, the two Frenchmen set out for Canada with two tiny English ships, Eaglet and Nonsuch, to search for beaver-given the resounding title Castor canadensis Kuhl by naturalists-in the first voyage of the Governors and Company of Adventurers Trading into Hudson’s Bay, known less formally as the Hudson’s Bay Company. The fortunes of weather, however, decreed that the good ship Nonsuch would make the historic crossing alone. Four hundred miles off the west coast of Ireland, Eaglet was pounded by a tempest and forced to turn back.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Wild West magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

In August 1669, Nonsuch would also return to harbor in England, after having spent a year in the ice-gripped waters of Hudson’s Bay. Although the cargo of goods carried aboard to trade with the Indians had been modest (only some 650 pounds), the shipload of furs the Nonsuch brought home in its hold doubled the value of the trade goods.

The trip clearly had been a success. Within a year, the Company of Adventurers was formally chartered by King Charles, and his warrior cousin Prince Rupert, a hell-for-leather royalist horse captain in the English Civil War, was made governor in 1670. The Hudson’s Bay Company had indeed arrived, and with its arrival had ignited 90 years of conflict between France and England. This violent contest would draw the Hudson’s Bay adventurers into two of the most crucial, yet least known, battles ever fought in North America.

In June 1686, three years before the war officially broke out, the French commander, the Chevalier de Troyes, began a long march from Montreal to conquer the forts of the Hudson’s Bay Company–800 miles away in the frigid North. After an epic march of 87 spirit-breaking days, de Troyes’ little army of 100 men, stiffened by a detachment of Marines, descended on the first of the company’s posts to come within striking range, the Moose Factory, so-called because the company factor, or agent, made his residence there. At dawn, the French raiders, led by the fearless Le Moyne brothers, Pierre d’Iberville and Jacques de Sainte-HéIeacutene, attacked the surprised company men. Sword in one hand and musket in the other, d’Iberville bravely held off the furious attack of the fort’s 16 defenders until his comrades could force open the gate and seize the factory.

Elated by his lightning success, de Troyes then set his sights on Rupert House, named in honor of the company’s first governor, some 70 miles up the eastern coast of James Bay. In the silent wilderness the Frenchmen scored another stunning coup. At Rupert House they found a ladder conveniently left propped up on the side of the fort, and they rudely woke up the slumbering English with hand grenades lobbed down the chimney. Soon Rupert House was in the hands of the French, along with the company’s supply ship, Craven.

De Troyes completed the French roll of triumph with the bloodless capture of the strongest of the James Bay outposts, Albany Fort. After a bombardment from siege guns brought from Rupert House, the fort’s defenders saluted their besiegers with loud cries of the French battle shout ‘vive le roi,’ then they threw open the gates.

In the summer of 1697, when France and England were still gripped in King William’s War (as the conflict was formally known), d’Iberville returned. Arriving off the mouth of the Nelson River, a tributary of Hudson’s Bay, on September 3 aboard the 44-gun Pelican of the French navy, he confronted three British ships, Dering, Hudson’s Bay and Royal Navy frigate Hampshire.

By land, d’Iberville was threatened by the guns of York Factory, the company’s strongest fort. By sea, he faced the combined firepower of three English warships. Wasting no time on indecision, d’Iberville did what he was most conditioned to do-he attacked.

For four hours the sea battle raged across the ice-cold bay. The Hampshire fired a murderous broadside of disabling chain shot that sheared through Pelican’s rigging, making it virtually impossible for the ship’s crew to clamber aloft to control the all-important sails. Dering blew off the ornate, hand-carved prow of the French ship, while Dering and Hudson’s Bay peppered the wounded Pelican with a hailstorm of man-shredding grapeshot and musket balls.In a lull in the action, as the captains of Pelican andHampshire maneuvered to find the best position to continue the action (a tactic called’seeking the weather gauge’), the English captain and d’Iberville saluted each other’s valor with a toast of vintage wine. It was the last glass of wine ever to touch the Englishman’s lips. Moments later, d’Iberville came up alongside of Hampshire and gutted the Britisher below the waterline with a killing volley.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to