By 1696, King William's War was in its seventh year, and the Bay of Fundy had become a contested corridor between New England and New France. D'Iberville had sailed from Rochefort, France, to Quebec City, where he embarked eighty troops and Canadian militiamen. He then proceeded to Havre a l'Anglois -- the future site of Louisbourg on Cape Breton -- and took aboard thirty Mi'kmaq warriors before heading for the Saint John River. His destination was Fort Nashwaak, near present-day Fredericton, the capital of Acadia under Governor Villebon. The English, aware that French supplies were moving through the bay, dispatched the frigate Newport with twenty-four guns, the frigate Sorlings with thirty-four guns, and a provincial tender from Boston to intercept. What followed was a collision of empires in a channel barely wide enough to hold them.

The fighting actually began nine days before the main battle. On July 5, a force of 140 Mi'kmaq and Maliseet warriors, along with French officers Jacques Testard de Montigny and the Chevalier, launched an ambush from Manawoganish Island against the crews of four English vessels. Some of the English sailors had come ashore in a longboat to gather firewood -- a routine chore that turned lethal. Five of the nine men in the boat were killed. The Mi'kmaq then burned one of the English vessels under the direction of Father Florentine, a missionary based at Chignecto. This was not a skirmish between European regulars following the conventions of formal warfare. It was frontier combat, shaped by Indigenous alliances and the brutal pragmatism of a war fought in forests, bays, and river mouths far from any court or capital.

D'Iberville anchored his two warships, the Envieux and the Profond, in thick fog on July 14. When the weather cleared at two o'clock, the French spotted the three English vessels to windward, bearing directly for the Saint John River. The English, in turn, saw the French ships and bore down on them -- a decision they would regret. D'Iberville's crews were battle-hardened, his ships better armed for the close-quarters engagement that followed. The Envieux and Profond captured the Newport and its twenty-four guns. The Sorlings, outmatched despite carrying thirty-four guns, escaped and ran for Boston, where it found two English warships and an armed merchantman. The four English vessels then sailed east to counter an expected French attack on Portsmouth, but when they spotted the Envieux and Profond near Mount Desert Island, the French slipped away. According to Baudouin, who recorded the details, not a single Frenchman was wounded in the engagement.

The battle off Saint John was not D'Iberville's main objective -- it was merely an obstacle he cleared on his way to a larger prize. After the engagement, he sailed to Penobscot, arriving August 7 to find Villieu, Montigny, twenty-five Canadians, Father Thury, the Baron de Saint-Castin, and three hundred Indigenous warriors waiting for him. On August 14, d'Iberville led this combined force in the Siege of Pemaquid, capturing the English stronghold in present-day Maine. The Bay of Fundy had served its purpose: a staging ground, a supply corridor, and now a graveyard for English ambitions in Acadia. These waters off Saint John, where the tides reverse twice daily with the force of entire rivers, had witnessed their second naval battle in five years. The first, in 1691, had cost England a governor. The second cost them a frigate and, within weeks, a fortress.