Qualla: Naval Battle off Tatamagouche

Naval Battle off Tatamagouche: Introduction

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Captain David Donahew saw fifty canoes and four French vessels bearing down on him and did the only thing a man outgunned and becalmed could do: he lied. Running up a French flag on his sloop Resolution, he let the approaching Mi'kmaq paddlers believe they were looking at a friendly privateer escorting a prize. It bought him time. Not much, but enough. When the wind died and the trap closed around him in the waters off Tatamagouche on the morning of June 15, 1745, Donahew hauled down the French colors, raised the British ensign, and opened fire on everything within range.

Naval Battle off Tatamagouche: A Convoy Bound for Louisbourg

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The stakes that morning were far larger than one sloop's survival. Paul Marin de la Malgue was leading a relief convoy of four French vessels and fifty Mi'kmaq canoes carrying some 1,200 fighters toward the besieged Fortress Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island. New England forces, n...

Naval Battle off Tatamagouche: Two Hours of Desperate Gunnery

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Donahew's Resolution carried just twelve guns and a crew of fifty. His two companion vessels, Captain Daniel Fones in the fourteen-gun Tartar and Captain Robert Becket in the six-gun Bonetta, had left him to investigate smoke from what they thought was a French encampment onshore...

Naval Battle off Tatamagouche: A Fortress Falls

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The French built hasty defenses on land at Tatamagouche, expecting the New Englanders to press their advantage. When another colonial vessel appeared a few days later, the Huron contingent, apparently shaken by their losses, abandoned the convoy and headed back toward Quebec. Wit...

Naval Battle off Tatamagouche: The Captain's Fate

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Donahew's courage cost him his life just two weeks later. After the fall of Louisbourg, he and Fones encountered Marin again near the Strait of Canso. Donahew went ashore with eleven men and was immediately surrounded by three hundred Mi'kmaq and allied Indigenous warriors. The c...

Naval Battle off Tatamagouche: Remembered at the Water's Edge

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In August 1939, the Historic Sites Monument Board erected a monument at Tatamagouche overlooking the harbour where the battle took place. The quiet village on the Northumberland Strait shore gives little outward sign of its role in reshaping colonial North America. The waters are...