The war had reduced the Hudson’s Bay Company to such straits that several of the directors had gone bankrupt advancing money to keep the ships sailing. No more money could be borrowed in England, and agents were trying to raise funds in Amsterdam. Nevertheless, the Company presented the captains—Smithsend and Grimmington—with £100 each for capturing York. The captured furs replenished the exhausted finances and preparation was made to dispatch a mighty fleet that would forever settle mastery of the bay. Two hundred extra mariners were to be engaged. On _The Dering_, Grimmington, now a veteran campaigner, was to take sixty fighting men. Captain Moon was to have eighteen on the little frigate, _Perry_. Edgecombe’s _Hudson’s Bay_, frigate, was to have fifty-five; Captain Fletcher’s _Hampshire_, sixty; the fire ship _Prosperous_ another thirty under a new man, Captain Batty. These mariners were in addition to the usual seamen and company servants. On _The Hudson’s Bay_ also went Smithsend as adviser in the campaign. Every penny that could be raised on sales of beaver, all that the directors were able to pledge of their private fortunes, and all the money that could be borrowed by the Adventurers as a corporate company, went to outfit the vessels for what was to be the deciding campaign. With Bailey in control at Nelson and old Governor Knight down at Albany—surely the French could be driven completely from the bay. * * * * * Those captives that Allen’s ship had brought to England, lay in prison five months at Portsmouth before they were set free. Released at last, they hastened to France where their emaciated, ragged condition spoke louder than their indignant words. Frenchmen languishing in English prison! Like wildfire ran the rumor of the outrage! Once before when Péré, the Frenchman, had been imprisoned on Hudson Bay, Iberville had thrust the sword of vengeance into the very heart of the English fastness. France turned again to the same Robin Hood of Canada’s rude chivalry. Iberville was at this time carrying havoc from hamlet to hamlet of Newfoundland, where two hundred English had already fallen before his sword and seven hundred been captured. On the 7th of April, 1697, Scrigny, his brother, just home from Nelson, was dispatched from France with five men-of-war—_The Pelican_, _The Palmier_, _The Profound_, _The Violent_, _The Wasp_—to be placed under Iberville’s command at Placentia, Newfoundland, whence he was to proceed to Hudson Bay with orders, “to leave not a vestige remaining” of the English fur trade in the North.