English Turn

English Turn [Detours des Anglais] is a bend in the Mississippi River below [Louisiana]

Louisiana Historical Marker

English Turn - So named because in this bend, 1699, Bienville, coming downstream, met the British who had come up the river to choose a site for a settlement. Bienville convinced Captain Lewis Banks that the territory was in possession of the French. Early concessions were established in the vicinity

From The Second Voyage to the Mississippi, The Journal of the Renommee by Iberville

"...From Cape San Antonio I steered for the Biloxi Bay anchorage, at which I arrived on January 8, 1700, and moored it's two anchors in 21 feet of water.

"The 9th. In the morning M. De Sauvolle came aboard. I learned from him that the garrison was in good health, although four men had died, among them two Canadians, one Buccaneer, and one enlisted man for La Rochelle.

"He told me that an English corvette of ten guns, commanded by Captain Louis Bance, had entered the Mississippi and gone 25 leagues upstream, where my brother, De Bienville, with five men in two bark canoes, had come across the Corvette at anchor, awaiting favorable winds to go higher upstream. My brother sent two men to tell him to immediately leave the country, which was in the possession of the king, and that, if he did not leave, he would force him to. With this, he complied after talking with my brother, whom he knew from having seen him with me at Hudson Bay, where I captured this captain."

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M. DE BIENVILLE, in descending from the Natchez on his route to Biloxi, met, on the i6th of September, a small English frigate,* careened in a bend of the river, about three leagues in circuit. He demanded of the captain what he was doing in the Mississippi, and if he was not aware that the French had already established themselves in this country? The Englishman was much astonished and replied that he was ignorant of the fact, and soon after retraced his steps to the sea, at the same time uttering threats against M. DE BIENVILLE and the French. It was from this circumstance that the bend of the river was afterwards called the English Turn.