Over the next forty years, the Hudson's Bay Company established trading posts throughout northern Manitoba and the area around James Bay in what is now Ontario. Of course, the French considered Rupertsland to be their domain, and frequent conflicts erupted. Control of the fortified trading posts would alternate dependent upon who was more cunning at destroying the others' forts. While most skirmishes were on land, one dramatic sea battle raged off the coast of York Factory at the mouth of the Nelson River on September 5th of 1697.
Four French ships under the command of Pierre le Moyne, Sieur d'Iberville, were in pursuit of a small British fleet bound for York Factory. En route, d'Iberville's flagship the Pelican separated from the other three ships and sailed alone off York's rough and icy coast. Here three British ships including the British man-of-war, the Hampshire, lay waiting for the French offensive.
Without aid from the three missing French ships, d'lberville mounted a bold assault upon the Hampshire and sunk the man-of-war against terrific odds, drowning the 290 British seamen on board. Witnessing the horror of the attack, the captain of the Royal Hudson's Bay surrendered to d'Iberville while the third British ship, the Dering fled the battle for safer waters.
Still the gravest onslaught was yet to come.
Before d'Iberville could take possession of the defeated Royal Hudson's Bay, a terrible storm swept down upon the Bay. D'lberville's treasured vessel, the Pelican, could withstand the guns of war but not the ravages of an Arctic storm. Driven aground the Pelican was wrecked, drowning twenty-three French sailors off Manitoba's northern coast.
However, fate smiled again on d' Iberville when the storm abated and the three errant French ships appeared to the rescue. Facing
further attack, York Factory surrendered to the French. That part
of Manitoba's north remained under New France's control until the Treaty of Utrecht restored dominion of the Bay to the shareholders of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1713.