Duc d'Anville expedition
The Duc d'Anville expedition (June – October 1746) was sent from France to recapture Louisbourg and take peninsular Acadia (present-day mainland Nova Scotia).
[1] This effort was the fourth and final French attempt to regain the Nova Scotian capital, Annapolis Royal, during King George's War.
Many in the ships' crews and the troops being transported fell ill before the expedition finally reached Chebucto Bay (present-day Halifax Harbour), and d'Anville died not long after its arrival.
This ended in a storm, during which several vessels were struck by lightning, which, in one case, caused a magazine explosion that killed and wounded over thirty men.
She was heavily damaged and taking on water in the storm off Sable Island and decided to return to France with Le Raphael.
Twenty leagues (97 km) off Ireland HMS Nottingham severely damaged Le Mars in an attack and took her as a prize in October 1746.
[7] De Ramezay's soldiers spent the summer and early fall at Chignecto and Minas waiting for the arrival of the long overdue D'Anville expedition.
)[8] The d'Anville expedition finally reached Nova Scotia in late September, after enduring a three-month voyage.
Forty-four vessels anchored in Chebucto (present day Halifax, Nova Scotia), where the expedition would spend the next five weeks.
Some recovered from scurvy with the arrival of fresh supplies brought by the Acadians from Grand Pre and Pisiquid, but typhus and typhoid continued to ravage the men.
By mid-October, 41 percent of the men who reached Chebucto with the fleet were dead or seriously ill – 2,861 petty officers, seamen and soldiers.
[12] In response to the threat posed by the French expeditions, Massachusetts Bay Governor William Shirley sent Colonel Arthur Noble and hundreds of New England soldiers to secure control over Acadia and drive de Ramezay out.
De Villiers attacked and defeated a superior force of Noble's militia who were billeted in houses in the Acadian settlement of Grand-Pré, in the Minas Basin at the top of the Bay of Fundy.
After the expedition, Nova Scotia Governor Paul Mascarene told Acadians to avoid all "deluding Hopes of Returning under the Dominion of France.
