Battle of Bloody Creek ( 1711 ) The Battle of Bloody Creek was fought on 10 / 21 June 1711 during Queen Anne ' s War . An Abenaki militia successfully ambushed British and New England soldiers at a place that became known as Bloody Creek after the battles fought there . The creek empties into the Annapolis River at present day Carleton Corner , Nova Scotia , and was also the location of a battle in 1757 . The battle was part of an orchestrated attempt by the leaders of New France to weaken the British hold on Annapolis Royal . The British had only captured the fort the previous year and they only had a very tenuous control of the area . The battle , in which the entire British force was captured or killed , emboldened the French and their native allies to blockade Annapolis Royal . Without heavy weapons , the force was unable to effectively attack the fort , and abandoned the siege when British reinforcements arrived by sea . Background . Port Royal , the capital of the French colony of Acadia , was settled in 1604 , one year after Acadia ' s founding , and served as the colonial capital for much of the next hundred years . It consequently became a focal point for conflict between the English colonists of New England and the Acadian inhabitants . It was destroyed in 1613 by English raiders led by Samuel Argall , but eventually rebuilt . In 1690 it was captured by forces from the Province of Massachusetts Bay , although it was restored to France on 20 September 1697 by the Treaty of Ryswick . In the 1710 Siege of Port Royal an expedition of New England militia and British marines under Francis Nicholson again captured Port Royal . The town was renamed Annapolis Royal , with Samuel Vetch as the British Governor of Nova Scotia , and the fort was renamed Fort Anne . This expedition left a garrison numbering about 450 men , that was composed of a combination of British marines and New England provincial militia . The garrison was reinforced with regular troops in the following months , however the British only had effective control of the fort and the nearby town . The terms of capitulation had included a provision in which the French residents within of the fort were to be protected , provided they took an appropriate oath to the British crown . A total of 481 Acadians were covered by this provision , but by mid - January 1711 only 57 had actually taken an oath . When word of Port Royal ' s fall reached France , the marine minister Pontchartrain ordered Antoine Gaulin , the French Catholic missionary priest to the loosely allied Indian tribes of present - day Maine and New Brunswick , to harass the British at Annapolis Royal so that they could not establish a firm foothold in the territory . Bernard - Anselme d ' Abbadie de Saint - Castin , the mixed - blood son of a French father and a Penobscot mother , was given military command of Acadia , and received similar orders . Prelude . The first winter was a particularly difficult one for the British garrison , which was reduced by early 1711 to about 240 " effective men Officers included " due to death , disease , and desertion . They had ongoing difficulty getting provisions and materials needed to repair the fort because of the reluctance of the Acadians to help . This reluctance was fueled in part by the activities of Saint - Castin and Gaulin — the Acadians in Annapolis Royal refused to do the necessary logging , citing the danger of Indian attacks . To counter this , the British began sending out armed parties to protect the loggers . These logging parties were sent into the woodlands up the Annapolis River , and the cut wood was floated down the river . In May 1711 Governor Vetch received reports that these work crews and others who supported the British were being harassed by Mi ' kmaq and Abenakis opposed to British rule . In his reports he noted that the fort was " every day more and more Infested with skulking Indians " , and that villagers within the " banlieu " ( the three - mile protection area ) were being harassed . Desperate for timbers to repair the fort , Vetch organized a force of 70 New England militia under Captain David Pigeon to accompany the fort ' s engineer on an expedition up the river . Pigeon ' s instructions were to assure the loggers that they would be paid and protected if they brought the timber down to the fort , but that there would be " severity " if they did not . Not long before Pigeon ' s party set out , an Indian force organized by Gaulin and Saint - Castin arrived in the area north of Annapolis Royal , with instructions to harass and ambush the British when the opportunity presented itself . The exact size and composition of this force is not known with precision . Vetch reported it to be 150 , but other sources reported it to be as low as 50 men . Many historians report that the force was composed of Abenakis , although Geoffrey Plank and others claim that the force also included some Mi ' kmaq . British Lieutenant Paul Mascarene for a time thought that some local Acadians might have been involved , but thought this unlikely after learning of its recent arrival ( literally the day before , according to one account ) in the area . The identity and ethnicity of its leader is also uncertain ; Governor Vaudreuil reported that it was led by someone named l ' Aymalle . Battle . The New Englanders departed Annapolis Royal on 10 / 21 June in a whaleboat and two flatboats , heading up the Annapolis River . Because they were delayed by the tide , word of the force ' s departure preceded them , giving the Indians time to set up an ambush near the mouth of what later became known as Bloody Creek . The whaleboat was faster on the water , and was about a mile ( 1 . 6 km ) ahead of the flatboats when it reached the ambush site . The surprise was complete : all but one of the whaleboat ' s men were killed . Hearing the gunfire , the flatboats hurried to catch up , and carelessly made directly for the whaleboat . This exposed them to fire from Indians on the shore , and they suffered further significant casualties before they were surrounded and the survivors surrendered . Sixteen were killed , nine wounded , and the rest were captured . Aftermath . The victory at Bloody Creek rallied the local resistance , and prompted many of the Acadians who were nominally under British protection to withdraw to the north . Soon thereafter a force of some 600 warriors , including Acadians , Abenaki , and Mi ' kmaq , gathered and blockaded Fort Anne under the leadership of Gaulin and Saint - Castin . The defending garrison was small , but the attackers had no artillery and were thus unable to make an impression on the fort , and the fort was still accessible by sea . Gaulin went to Plaisance in Newfoundland for supplies and equipment to advance the siege ; Governor Philippe Pastour de Costebelle provided supplies , but the ship had the misfortune to encounter a major British fleet and was captured . That same expedition abandoned its goal of attacking Quebec when eight of its ships were lost on the shores of the Saint Lawrence River ; Governor Vetch , who had accompanied the expedition as a leader of the provincial militia , returned to Annapolis Royal with 200 provincial militia , after which the besiegers withdrew . Annapolis Royal remained in British hands for the remainder of the war , but Acadians and Indians continued to resist the British after peace was reached and Acadia was formally ceded to Britain with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 . This resistance was motivated by a French desire to recover Acadia and by the concerns of the Abenaki and Mi ' kmaq , who had not been parties to Utrecht , to British encroachment on their lands and liberties after the war ended . The Indian disputes led to Dummer ' s War in the 1720s ; it was fought primarily in northern New England , but British settlements in Nova Scotia were also attacked . The disputes between the French and British over Acadia / Nova Scotia were not resolved until the British conquests of the Seven Years ' War and the expulsion of the Acadians in the 1750s . The site was again the scene of battle during the Seven Years ' War , and has been designated by the Canadian government as a National Historic Site of Canada .