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The first ‘naval’ war in what is now Canada took place in the Bay of Fundy in the 1640s and 50s. But the clash in Acadia was not entirely between rival empires: it was largely a struggle among the French, the first Europeans to settle the permanently in the region, over who would exercise control.

In the 16th century, European monarchs created overseas empires by granting commercial charters to wealthy individuals to explore and exploit on their behalf. The Hudson’s Bay Company, founded in 1670, is the last remnant of that age. The modern Maritime provinces, then known as Acadia, were divided by the French King among several rival small noblemen, who’s claims often overlapped. The result was that their “activities often led to private wars, in distant lands.”

One of two rivals in the struggle for Acadia was Charles de Saint-Etienne de la Tour, the son of the seigneur of Port-Royal (modern-day Nova Scotia). La Tour was granted a charter to exploit the fur trade along the Saint John River, the richest source of fur in the region. In 1632 he built a fortified trading post at the mouth of the Saint John River. Originally announced in Paris as Fort Sainte-Marie, it was commonly known as Fort La Tour after its benefactor.

_{Charles de Menou d’Aulnay
Source: Wikipedia}La Tour was not without rivals, however. From across the Bay of Fundy, Charles de Menou d’Aulnay also wanted control of the region. Both men controlled small private armies and fleets of ships that “linked their new world possessions to Europe.” Their feud led them to engage in “battles which, although small in scale, had the potential to determine the fate of the colony.”(translation) The opening engagement of the struggle between La Tour and d’Aulnay was a naval combat off Port-Royal in 1641.

_{Francoise-Marie Jacquelin
Source: Wikipedia}After their indecisive battle, d’Aulnay attempted to have La Tour returned to France. La Tour, a Protestant and therefore not in favour in the court, failed to make the voyage and d’Aulnay was ordered to arrest him. La Tour sent his wife Francois-Marie Jacquelin to France to plead his case. Jacquelin, to her credit, not only defended her husband in France, but she also helped him escape to Boston, where together they raised a band of mercenaries and returned to Saint John. With four ships, they drove d’Aulnay’s fleet back across the Bay of Fundy.

An “uneasy standoff” lasted for several years while d’Aulnay and Jacquelin, again standing in for her husband, travelled to France to plead their case for the supremacy of Acadia.

The luck of Charles and Jacquelin had run out. This time d’Aulnay won, and he did not wait long to press his advantage. In February 1645, while Charles La Tour was away in Boston, d’Aulnay brought his ship, the Grand Cardinal, into Saint John harbour and bombarded Fort La Tour. Jacquelin again saved the day; she replied with her cannon and drove d’Aulnay off to Port-Royal. Having repaired his vessel, d’Aulnay returned in April, landed his artillery, and bombarded the fort for three days from the safety of the shore.

_{Source: NBMHP|Fort La Tour|UNB}On Easter Sunday, 1645, d’Aulnay and his men breached the walls of Fort La Tour. Jacquelin surrendered, on the understanding that her men would be spared. Instead, in the act of foul treachery, d'Aulnay hanged most of them and forced Jacquelin to watch. She died three weeks later, and Charles, her husband, retreated to Quebec to regroup.

d’Aulnay’s victory did not end the fighting. In the 1640s, Nicolas Denys, another man with commercial interests in the region, emerged as a rival. In response, d’Aulnay burned Denys' trading post on Miscou Island in Northern New Brunswick. Denys returned to France, which left d’Aulnay as the master of Acadia for the time being.

d'Aulnay did not reign supreme for long: in 1650 he drown in a canoe accident. But even in death, he cast a long shadow. His influence over the region would spell the beginning of the end for the designs of La Tour and Denys.

In 1650, having learned of d'Aulnay’s death, La Tour and Denys returned to Acadia to regain what they had lost. Denys was arrested on Cape Breton Island by d’Aulnay’s widow and briefly jailed in Quebec City. Upon release, Denys established a trading post at Nepisiquit (Bathurst) in Northern New Brunswick in 1652.

A year later, the ghost of d’Aulnay came back to haunt Denys. Emmanuel Le Borgne, d’Aulnay’s principal creditor, arrived to regain his investment. Despite being dragged to Port-Royal by Le Borgne, Denys got a message to La Tour – once again operating his trading along the Saint John River -- to prepare for what was to come.

La Tour prepared his fort for an attack. It came in 1654, when Le Borgne “laid siege” to Fort La Tour. Denys sensing his chance, escaped from Port-Royal while Le Borgne was engaged in combat with La Tour. Denys managed to make his way back to France, where he purchased the Compagnie de la Nouvelle-France, with the rights to conduct commercial activities from Cape Canso to the Gaspe.

La Tour was not so lucky. He kept Le Borgne at Bay and drove him off. But the day after Le Borgne departed, a more daunting adversary sailed into Saint John harbour.

Robert Sedgewick, an English privateer charged with eliminating French efforts to help the Dutch in their war against England, arrived from New England with a small fleet. Worn down from Le Borgne’s siege, La Tour and his men quickly surrendered to Sedgewick’s forces. Sedgewick now claimed large portions of the maritime region of New France, but interestingly left Denys’s establishments alone.

French interests in Acadia were restored after the Anglo-Dutch war. La Tour reconciled his differences with d’Aulnay’s estate by marrying his widow. La Tour then sold all his commercial interests in the region to the new governor of Acadia and retired to Cape Sable, Nova Scotia. As for Denys, he retired to his trading post in Nepisiquit, where he penned the “most important written record of early Acadia” and died at eighty-five in 1688.

The struggle for control of Acadia has at times been painted as a struggle between heros and villains. But research has since shown that determining who was the hero and who was the villain is not so easy. Dreadful acts are believed to have been committed on both sides of the conflict. Both La Tour and d’Aulnay were ambitious men.

As for the fort that carried La Tour’s name, there are accounts that the man who married La Tour’s daughter tried to revive it. What was left of it deteriorated and even its precise location became uncertain.

_{General view (© Parks Canada Agency / Agence Parcs Canada.)
Source: Fort La Tour National Historic Site of Canada}In 1955-56 and 1963, archaeological excavations found the fort under the “Green Mound” on Portland Point. No contemporary drawings of the fort survived, but the excavations revealed the basic trace and something of its construction. Parks Canada maintains a Historic site at the location where the remains were found. A replica fort and interpretation centre have been built nearby.