In 1697 five French men-of-war arrived in Hudson Straits under the command of the redoubtable Iberville. On his ship, the _Pelican_, forty men were down with scurvy. On another, the _Wasp_, a gun broke loose during a gale, crushing several of the crew. For eighteen days the little fleet was ice-jammed in an impenetrable fog. Later, the _Pelican_ became separated from the rest of the fleet. Seeing three ships on the horizon, Iberville hastened towards the supposed friends. They proved to be English men-of-war, the _Hampshire_, the _Dering_, and the _Hudson’s Bay_. When the French commander made that discovery, it was too late to flee. “Quickly, ropes were stretched to give the mariners hand-hold over the frost-slippery deck. Stoppers were ripped from the fifty cannon, and the batterymen below, under La Salle and Grandville, had stripped naked in preparation for the hell of flame and heat that was to be their portion in the impending battle. Bienville, Iberville’s brother, swung the infantrymen in line above decks, swords and pistols prepared for the hand-to-hand grapple. De la Potherie got the Canadians to the forecastle, knives and war hatchets out, bodies stripped, all ready to board when the ships knocked keels. . . . The _Hampshire_ let fly two roaring cannonades that ploughed up the decks of the _Pelican_ and stripped the French bare of masts to the hull. At the same instant, Grimmington’s _Dering_ and Smithsend’s _Hudson’s Bay_ circled to the left of the French and poured a stream of musketry fire across the _Pelican’s_ stern. At one full blast, forty French were mowed down; but the batterymen below never ceased their crash of bombs straight into the _Hampshire’s_ hull.”