History Browser

Fort Prince of Wales quickly fell to the French in 1782. Built there by the British Hudson's Bay Company after French general d'Iberville's raids in the late seventeenth century, the fort was a very strong stone structure, built in the European fashion. It was, however, very lightly garrisoned.

This page summarizes the national significance of Prince of Wales Fort according to the ministerially approved recommendations of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada. Prince of Wales Fort was significant in terms of the French/English rivalry over resources in the Hudson's Bay.

This aerial view shows Fort Prince of Wales, just across the Churchill river from present-day Churchill, Manitoba. Its construction began in 1717. The fort was taken without a fight by a French expedition to Hudson Bay in 1782. It was said to be the only sizeable bastioned stone fort on the Arctic Ocean. Its walls were restored in the 1950s. (Parks Canada)

In 1782, as part of a strategy of raids on British colonies, the French sent an expedition of three warships into Hudson Bay. It was commanded by the Comte de Lapérouse, who later became a great Pacific explorer.

Cape Merry was once called Knight's Round Point. James Knight sailed into the mouth of the Churchill River to begin construction of a fur trading post for the Hudson's Bay Company in 1717. The cape was later renamed to honour Captain John Merry, who was the Deputy Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company from 1712-18. This page describes the construction of the fort and its cannon battery.

For many years it was thought that Sloop Cove was a result of the phenomenon known as isostatic rebound, the gradual rising of land elevations as it springs back after thousands of years of being crushed under the weight of continental glaciers. The west coast of Hudson Bay is known as one of the more dramatic areas of isostatic rebound where the land still rises at a rate of a meter per century, but Sloops Cove, mooring ships in 1750 would have involved a daily water level that was, at most, less than 3 m higher than today.

This history of the fort includes details on the area's ecological and cultural past, the establishment of a trading post for the Hudson's Bay Company, the naming of the fort, the construction of its stone fortification, the destruction and rebuilding of the fort, HBC activities at the fort, living conditions at the fort, and the selection of the site as a national park in the 1920s.

These ruins encompass a massive fortification that commemorates the role of Prince of Wales Fort in the 18th-century French/English rivalry for control of the territory and resources around Hudson Bay.

Inscriptions left at Sloop Cove were left by the men who worked with the boats used by the Hudson's Bay Company. One of the signatures belonged to Samuel Hearne. In 1774, Hearne established the first inland trading post, Cumberland House, and was governor at Prince of Wales Fort from 1775 to 1782. Sloop Cove was a wintering cove for the sloops that over wintered in the bay and possibly a place for larger, ocean going ships to put in for repairs.