The French and Indian War was the North American theater of the Seven Years' War, lasting from 1754 to 1763. There was intense fighting between the troops of British America and the French inhabitants of Acadia, a colony of New France located in what is now the Canadian Maritime provinces and the U.S. state of Maine. In 1755 the British forcibly exiled the French-speaking Acadians; approximately 11,500 were exiled in total. Most of the exiled Acadians who managed to survive traveled to Louisiana, where their descendants are known as Cajuns. Other refugees returned to France or resettled in Baltimore. Ships boarded with 913 Acadian refugees arrived in Baltimore in November 1755. Shunned by a Francophobic population, the Acadians had to rely upon themselves to better their own conditions. Drawing on their experiences as fishers, many Acadian men became sailors and longshoremen.