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Updated: May 6, 2025
They advised against attempting to go up the rivers while French interlopers were active. Radisson bought nine hundred muskets for Nelson, and ordered two great guns to be mounted on the walls. When Smithsend arrived from imprisonment in Quebec, war fever against the French rose to white-heat.
Grimmington, Smithsend, Bailey, Kelsey all were for holding out; but d'Iberville's brother, Serigny, came in under flag of truce and bade them think well what would happen if the hundred Indians were turned loose on the fort. Finally the English surrendered and marched out with the honours of war. Grimmington sailed for England with as many of the refugees as his ship, the Dering, could convey.
Rumours of these raids Smithsend heard in his dungeon below Château St Louis; and he contrived to send a secret letter to England, warning the Company. In England the adventurers had lodged 'Parry' in jail on a charge of having 'damnified the Company. Smithsend's letter of warning had come; but how could the Company reach their forts before the ice cleared?
D'Iberville had barely time to unlock the Pelican from the death grapple, when the English frigate lurched and, amid hiss and roar of flame in a wild sea, sank like a stone, engulfing her panic-stricken crew almost before the French could realize what had happened. Smithsend at once surrendered the Hudson's Bay, and Mike Grimmington fled for Nelson on the Dering.
Three frigates were bought and fitted out the Dering, Captain Grimmington; the Hudson's Bay, Captain Smithsend; and the Hampshire, Captain Fletcher each with guns and sixty fighting men in addition to the regular crew. These ships were to meet the enemy sooner than was expected. In the last week of August 1697 the English fleet lay at the west end of Hudson Strait, befogged and surrounded by ice.
Outlaw did not know the later details of the raid how Hume was to be sent home to France for ransom, and Mike Grimmington was to be tortured to betray the secret signals of the Bay, and Smithsend and the other English seamen to be sold into slavery in Martinique.
Hume and Smithsend had been overpowered, fettered, and carried off prisoners to Quebec. Mike Grimmington too, who seems to have been on Hume's ship, was a prisoner. Fourteen of the crew had been bayoneted to death and thrown overboard.
Captain Hume, with Smithsend for mate, took his cargo boat, the Merchant Perpetuana. The Company did not own any of these vessels. They were chartered from Sir Stephen Evance and others, for sums running from £400 to £600 for the voyage, with £100 extra for the impress money. The large vessels carried crews of twenty men; the smaller, of twelve; and each craft boasted at least six great guns.
The rest, led by Bailey and Smithsend, marched overland south to the fort at Albany. Grimmington, with the Dering, had reached the fort in safety. Smithsend's captive ship, the Hudson's Bay, had been wrecked with the Pelican, but he himself had escaped to the fort. The loss of Nelson fell heavily on the Hudson's Bay Company. Their ships were not paid for; dividends stopped; stock dropped in value.
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