Ives Point Battery (Fort Ives)

Ives Point Battery (Fort Ives)

In 1762 a hurried effort began to construct a gun battery at Ives Point on the north end of McNabs Island, in response to the French capture of St. John’s, Newfoundland late in the Seven Years War. The British recaptured St. John’s later that year and the battery was not completed.

Construction of Ives Point Battery began in1864, during a period of strained relations with the United States, and an era when new weapons, particularly the more accurate and powerful rifled muzzle-loading guns, were introduced. Ives Point Battery was modified several times up to the end of World War I, to keep pace with changes in military technology.

The battery was built to protect the inner harbour between McNabs Island, York Redoubt and Point Pleasant with its large guns, and a submarine minefield was located in the main channel below the battery in the late 1800’s. Nearby Ives Point was an anchorage for the anti-submarine net that extended to Point Pleasant in 1917.

A historian offered a contemporary appraisal of the fort’s military value in 1995: “An enemy attempting to reach the inner harbour would face a devastating broadside from Fort Ives. In many ways the fort was the linch-pin that knitted together the inner and outer harbour defences.”

Ives Point Battery was the scene of an embarrassing accident in 1915, when on March 1 st a gun crew fired warning shots at the Canadian Government Ship Brant. One of the shots ricocheted off the water then “blew gaping holes” in the roof of a house on Lucknow Street almost 3,400 metres from the fort.

Today, Fort Ives remains a popular destination for visitors. Its once-ideal elevation for gun placements now offers beautiful, panoramic views of Halifax Harbour.