In the fury and heat of the fight, the French had not noticed the gathering storm that now broke with hurricane gusts of sleet and rain. The whistling in the cordage became a shrill shriek—warning a blizzard. Presently the billows were washing over decks with nothing visible of the wheel but the drenched helmsman clinging for life to his place. The pancake ice pounded the ships’ sides with a noise of thunder. Mist and darkness and roaring sleet drowned the death cries of the wounded, washed and tossed and jammed against the railing by the pounding seas. The Pelican could only drive through the darkness before the storm-flaw, “the dead” says an old record, “floating about on the decks among the living.” The hawser, that had towed the captive ship, snapped like thread. Captor and captive in vain threw out anchors. The anchors raked bottom. Cables were cut, and the two ships drove along the sands. The deck of The Pelican was icy with blood. Every shock of smashing billows jumbled dead and dying en masse. The night grew black as pitch. The little railing that still clung to the shattered decks of The Pelican was now washed away, and the waves carried off dead and wounded. Tables were hurled from the cabin. The rudder was broken, and the water was already to the bridge of the foundering ship, when the hull began to split, and The Pelican buried her prow in the sands, six miles from the fort.
All small boats had been shot away. The canoes of the Canadians swamped in the heavy sea as they were launched. Tying the spars of the shattered masts in four-sided racks, Iberville had the surviving wounded bound to these and towed ashore by the others, half-swimming, half-wading. Many of the men sprang into the icy sea bare to mid-waist as they had fought. Guns and powderhorns carried ashore in the swimmers’ teeth were all that were saved of the wreck. Eighteen more men lost their lives going ashore in the dark. For twelve hours they had fought without pause for food, and now shivering round fires kindled in the bush, the half-famished men devoured moss and seaweed raw. Two feet of snow lay on the ground, and when the men lighted fires and gathered round in groups to warm themselves, they became targets for sharp-shooters from the fort, who aimed at the camp fires. Smithsend, who escaped from the wrecked Hudson’s Bay and Grimmington, who had succeeded in taking The Dering into harbor—put Governor Bailey on guard. Their one hope was that Iberville might be drowned.
It was at this terrible pass that the other ships of Iberville’s fleet came to the rescue. They, too, had suffered from the storm, The Violent having gone to bottom; The Palmier having lost her steering gear, another ship her rudder.
Nelson or York under the English was the usual four-bastioned fur post, with palisades and houses of white fir logs a foot thick, the pickets punctured for small arms, with embrasures for some hundred cannon. It stood back from Hayes River, four miles up from the sea. The seamen of the wrecked Hudson’s Bay carried word to Governor Bailey of Iberville’s desperate plight. Nor was Bailey inclined to surrender even after the other ships came to Iberville’s aid. With Bailey in the fort were Kelsey, and both Grimmington and Smithsend who had once been captives with the French in Quebec. When Iberville’s messenger was led into the council hall with flag of truce and bandaged eyes to demand surrender, Smithsend advised resistance till the English knew whether Iberville had been lost in the wreck. Fog favored the French. By the 11th, they had been able to haul their cannon ashore undetected by the English and so near the fort that the first intimation was the blow of hammers erecting platforms. This drew the fire of the English, and the cannonading began on both sides. On the 12th, Serigny entered the council again to demand surrender.
“If you refuse, there will be no quarter,” he warned.
“Quarter be cursed,” thundered the old governor. Then turning to his men, “Forty pounds sterling to every man who fights.”
But the Canadians with all the savagery of Indian warfare, had begun hacking down palisades to the rear.
Serigny came once more from the French. “They are desperate,” he urged, “they must take the fort, or pass the winter like beasts in the wilds.” Bombs had been shattering the houses. Bailey was induced to capitulate, but game to the end, haggled for the best bargain he could get. Neither the furs nor the armaments of the fort were granted him, but he was permitted to march out with people unharmed, drums beating, flags unfurled, ball in mouth, matches lighted, bag and baggage, fife screaming its shrillest defiance—to march out with all this brave pomp to a desolate winter in the wilds, while the bush-lopers, led by Boisbriant, ransacked the fort. In the surrender, Grimmington had bargained for his ship, and he now sailed for England with the refugees, reaching the Thames on October 26. Bailey and Smithsend with other refugees, resolutely marched overland in the teeth of wintry blasts to Governor Knight at Albany. How Bailey reached England, I do not know. He must have gone overland with French coureurs to Quebec; for he could not have sailed through the straits after October, and he arrived in England by December.
That the blow of the last loss paralyzed the Company—need not be told. Of all their forts on the bay, they now had only Albany, and were in debt for the last year’s ships. They had not money to pay the captains’ wages. Nevertheless, they borrowed money enough to pay the wages of all the seamen and £20 apiece extra, for those who had taken part in the fight. Just at this time, the Treaty of Ryswick put an end to war between England and France, but, as far as the Company was concerned, it left them worse than before, for it provided that the contestants on the bay should remain as they were at the time, which meant that France held all the bay except Albany. Before this campaign, the loss of the English Adventurers from the French raiders had been £100,000. Now the loss totaled more than £200,000.