Fort Gaspareaux (later Fort Monckton) was a French fort at the head of Baie Verte near the mouth of the Gaspareaux River and just southeast of the modern community of

Port Elgin, New Brunswick Port Elgin is a formerly incorporated village in Westmorland County, New Brunswick, Canada. It is located near the Nova Scotia border at the mouth of the Gaspereaux River where it empties into the Northumberland Strait's Baie Verte. It is the g ...

, Canada, on the

Isthmus of Chignecto The Isthmus of Chignecto is an isthmus bordering the Maritime provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia that connects the Nova Scotia peninsula with North America. The isthmus separates the waters of Chignecto Bay, a sub-basin of the Bay of ...

. It was built during

Father Le Loutre's War Father Le Loutre's War (1749–1755), also known as the Indian War, the Mi'kmaq War and the Anglo-Mi'kmaq War, took place between King George's War and the French and Indian War in Acadia and Nova Scotia. On one side of the conflict, the Kingdo ...

and is now a

National Historic Site of Canada National Historic Sites of Canada () are places that have been designated by the federal Minister of the Environment on the advice of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada (HSMBC), as being of national historic significance. Parks C ...

overlooking the

Northumberland Strait The Northumberland Strait (French: ''détroit de Northumberland'') is a strait in the southern part of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in eastern Canada. The strait is formed by Prince Edward Island and the gulf's eastern, southern, and western sho ...

Father Le Loutre's War

Despite the British Conquest of Acadia in 1710, Nova Scotia remained primarily occupied by Catholic Acadians and Mi'kmaq.

began when

Edward Cornwallis Edward Cornwallis ( – 14 January 1776) was a British career military officer and member of the aristocratic Cornwallis family, who reached the rank of Lieutenant General. After Cornwallis fought in Scotland, putting down the Jacobite r ...

arrived to establish Halifax with 13 transports on June 21, 1749. The British quickly began to build other settlements. To guard against Mi'kmaq, Acadian and French attacks on the new Protestant settlements, British fortifications were erected in Halifax (1749), Dartmouth (1750), Bedford (Fort Sackville) (1751), Lunenburg (1753) and Lawrencetown (1754). Within 18 months of establishing Halifax, the British also took firm control of peninsula Nova Scotia by building fortifications in all the major Acadian communities: present-day Windsor ( Fort Edward); Grand Pre ( Fort Vieux Logis) and Chignecto (

Fort Lawrence Fort Lawrence was a British fort built during Father Le Loutre's War and located on the Isthmus of Chignecto (in the modern-day community of Fort Lawrence). Father Le Loutre's War Despite the British Conquest of Acadia in 1710, Nova Scotia re ...

). (A British fort already existed at the other major Acadian centre of

Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia Annapolis Royal is a town in and the county seat of Annapolis County, Nova Scotia, Canada. The community, known as Port Royal before 1710, is recognised as having one of the longest histories in North America, preceding the settlements at Ply ...

. Cobequid remained without a fort.) The only land route between Louisbourg and Quebec went from Baie Verte through Chignecto, along the Bay of Fundy and up the Saint John River. With the establishment of Halifax, the French recognized at once the threat it represented and that the Saint John River corridor might be used to attack Quebec City itself. To protect this vital gateway, at the beginning of 1749, the French strategically constructed three forts within 18 months along the route: one at Baie Verte (Fort Gaspareaux), one at Chignecto (

Fort Beauséjour Fort Beauséjour (), renamed Fort Cumberland in 1755, is a large, five-bastioned fort on the Isthmus of Chignecto in eastern Canada, a neck of land connecting the present-day province of New Brunswick with that of Nova Scotia. The site was strate ...

) and another at the mouth of the Saint John River (

Fort Menagoueche Fort Menagoueche () (1751, destroyed 1755, present historic site) was a French fort at the mouth of the St. John River, New Brunswick, Canada. French Officer Charles Deschamps de Boishébert et de Raffetot and Ignace-Philippe Aubert de Gaspé ...

). Effectively a fortified

warehouse A warehouse is a building for storing goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses, customs, etc. They are usually large plain buildings in industrial parks on the rural–urban fringe, out ...

manned by a small garrison, it was built in 1751 by the order of the Marquis de la Jonquière as a way station between

and

Louisbourg Louisbourg is an unincorporated community and former town in Cape Breton Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia. History The harbour had been used by European mariners since at least the 1590s, when it was known as English Port and Havre à l'An ...

and

Québec Quebec is Canada's largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, New Brunswick to the southeast and a coastal border ...

. It was originally a palisaded earthwork, measuring 180 feet (60 metres) square and surrounded by a ditch. At each corner was a

blockhouse A blockhouse is a small fortification, usually consisting of one or more rooms with loopholes, allowing its defenders to fire in various directions. It is usually an isolated fort in the form of a single building, serving as a defensive stro ...

equipped with small bore

cannon A cannon is a large-caliber gun classified as a type of artillery, which usually launches a projectile using explosive chemical propellant. Gunpowder ("black powder") was the primary propellant before the invention of smokeless powder during th ...

. By 1753, there was never more than 12 or 14 soldiers stationed at the fort at the same time. Communication with Fort Beauséjour across the

was at first via an ancient

portage Portage or portaging ( CA: ; ) is the practice of carrying water craft or cargo over land, either around an obstacle in a river, or between two bodies of water. A path where items are regularly carried between bodies of water is also called a '' ...

route, but, in 1754, a road was built linking the two forts. Communication by sea was possible in the summer to Québec, Louisbourg and

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

Seven Years' War

During the

Seven Years' War The Seven Years' War, 1756 to 1763, was a Great Power conflict fought primarily in Europe, with significant subsidiary campaigns in North America and South Asia. The protagonists were Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain and Kingdom of Prus ...

(also known as the

French and Indian War The French and Indian War, 1754 to 1763, was a colonial conflict in North America between Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain and Kingdom of France, France, along with their respective Native Americans in the United States, Native American ...

), immediately after the

Battle of Fort Beauséjour The Battle of Fort Beauséjour was fought on the Isthmus of Chignecto and marked the end of Father Le Loutre's War and the opening of a British offensive in the Acadia/Nova Scotia theatre of the Seven Years' War, which would eventually lead to t ...

in 1755, the British sent 300 men, led by Colonel John Winslow, to take Fort Gaspareaux, then under the command of Captain Villeray. This was quickly accomplished, and the fort was renamed Fort Monckton (after colonial administrator

Robert Monckton Lieutenant general (United Kingdom), Lieutenant-General Robert Monckton (24 June 1726 – 21 May 1782) was a British Army officer, politician and colonial administrator. He had a distinguished military and political career, being second in com ...

) and put under the charge of an English garrison. In the spring of 1756, Mi’kmaw militia ambushed a wood gathering party from Fort Monckton (former Fort Gaspareaux), and scalped nine of them. These soldiers' remains are in a small military graveyard at the fort. The British abandoned the fort later in the same year.

Commanders

* Benjamin Rouer de VillerayCanadian Biography
/ref> * Thomas Cobb (military officer) *

Joseph Frye Joseph Frye (March 19, 1712 – July 25, 1794) was a military leader from colonial Massachusetts. Life Born in Andover, Massachusetts, he obtained the rank of general in the Massachusetts militia after serving in King George's War and the ...

National Historic Site

A stone cairn was erected by the National Historic Sites and Monuments Board in the 1930s to commemorate the fort. The site today consists of a ditched enclosure. Palisaded grounds once surrounded the grounds on the inside of the ditch. There is a small cemetery - the headstones are now illegible. An unmanned light structure was erected in 1972.

References

External links

Fort blueprintGoogle Map viewForts of New France Notes on Fort Moncton

Affiliations

The Museum is affiliated with: CMA,

CHIN The chin is the forward pointed part of the anterior mandible (List_of_human_anatomical_regions#Regions, mental region) below the lower lip. A fully developed human skull has a chin of between 0.7 cm and 1.1 cm. Evolution The presence of a we ...

, and

Virtual Museum of Canada Digital Museums Canada (DMC; , ''MNC'') is a funding program in Canada "dedicated to online projects by the museum and heritage community," helping organizations to build digital capacity. Administered by the Canadian Museum of History (CMH) wi ...