Hugonin Battery
Located on a 60-foot bluff on the west side of McNab’s Island just north of McNab’s Cove, and about 600 yards south of Ives Point Battery, Hugonin Battery, also known as Fort Hugonin, was built between 1898 and 1899 as an adjunct to nearby Ives Point Battery. The fortification was named for Captain Roderick Hugonin, a British Army officer who had married a daughter of James McNab, a descendant of the island’s original owners, and lived on the island between 1852 and 1865.
The battery consisted of four light, breech-loading Elswick 12-pounder (3-inch) Mark I Quick Fire (Q.F.) guns; each gun capable of 15 aimed rounds per minute. The gun emplacements were arranged in a line connected by a 6-foot-high concrete parapet, interspersed with various casemated supporting structures. While the maximum effective range of these guns was 10,000 yards (9 km), the intent for Hugonin Battery was to engage targets in the harbour entrance at close range – between about 2,500 yards and 500 yards.
Hugonin Battery was intended as defence against torpedo boats and other fast craft attempting to gain entrance to Halifax Harbour. It was considered to be ideally positioned to engage attacking craft from abeam, as they passed close by the battery in the main channel. The guns were also well positioned to guard the shoreline beneath York Redoubt, just 2,000 yards away on the opposite side of the main entrance channel into the harbour. Furthermore, they covered the anti-access minefield located just north of Hugonin Battery between Ives Point and Point Pleasant, that was an integral part of the harbour defences until 1905. There were no searchlights located at Hugonin, rather the battery relied on illumination provided by the lights at Ives Point and Point Pleasant.
Associated concrete buildings at the site included an oil store, an artillery store, shell and cartridge magazines and crew shelters. The concrete main building above ground and to the rear was used as married quarters for officers and later as caretaker’s quarters and as barracks. In 1893-94 a Position Finder (PF) cell, part of the Halifax Fortress optical system, was set up in a concrete structure adjacent to the fort, on its south side, but removed in 1903. A well was sunk in 1915 and an associated water tank added. Some wooden structures (barracks, canteen, mess hall, cookhouse, etc.) were added during the First World War (1914-1918) but these have since disappeared. A 35-man wooden barracks was moved from Hugonin to Ives Point Battery in 1942. Rubble filled cribs and a breastwork of spars was built along the shoreline in front of the battery to prevent erosion by the sea, and a wharf with a road serviced the battery; these are long gone.
The battery was active during the First World War, but placed in maintenance status afterwards.
Two of the 12-pounder QF guns were relocated to Sandwich Point in 1922 to form a practice battery there. The main caretaker’s building was later used as a schoolhouse by the McNab’s Island School Board during the 1930s. The remaining two 12-pounder guns, in storage at Ives Point Battery from 1932, were transferred to the new Strawberry Battery further south on McNab’s Island in May 1940, which was better positioned to cover the new anti-submarine barrier that stretched between Maugher Beach and the York Shore Battery. The two 12-pounders that had been sent to Sandwich Point were re-mounted at Hugonin at the beginning of the Second World War (1939-1945). They were manned initially by the 51st Heavy Battery, 1st (Halifax) Coast Brigade, Royal Canadian Artillery until Hugonin Battery was deactivated as a coastal defence fortification in 1940, when Strawberry Battery was stood up.
The site continued to be used by the Royal Canadian Navy to house equipment for degaussing and sound ranging, monitoring magnetic and acoustic signatures of navy ships in the Halifax approaches from 1942 until the 1990s. The 11-hectare site was transferred to the Nova Scotia provincial government in 2013, marking the end of a formal military presence on McNab’s Island after over two and a half centuries. Today the concrete main building still stands and the gun emplacements remain, although they are extensively overgrown by vegetation.
References:
Harry Piers The Evolution of the Halifax Fortress, 1749-1928. NS Public Archives 1947.
A.J.B. Johnston Defending Halifax: Ordnance, 1825-1905. Parks Canada 1981.
The Friends of McNab’s Island Society website (https://mcnabsisland.ca)