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Revolutionary Warship Discovered In Lake Ontario

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Los Angeles Times

Published: June 14, 2008

A team of underwater explorers has found the remains of HMS Ontario, a 22-gun British warship that sank in a storm on the southern shore of Lake Ontario during the last years of the American Revolution.

The 80-foot-long brig-sloop is one of the oldest shipwrecks discovered in the Great Lakes and one of the best preserved, its finders said Friday.

The ship is sitting partially on its side in 500 feet of water between Niagara and Rochester, N.Y., both of its masts pointing toward the surface, explorers Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville announced.

The team located the wreck early this month after three years of searching with side-scan sonar, then sent down a remotely operated vehicle designed and built by Scoville to explore and film the remains.
Kennard and Scoville said they identified the ship by several characteristic features, including the crows' nests on the two masts, a carved scroll bow stern and the quarter galleries on either side of the stern. The quarter galleries are windowed balconies that enclose the officers' quarters.

Ontario was built in the dock at Carleton Island at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River and launched May 10, 1780. Throughout the summer, it carried troops, stores and civilian merchandise around Lake Ontario.

But in the early evening hours of Oct. 31 of that year, it sank with more than 120 men, women and children aboard in a sudden and violent gale. The dead were thought to include 30 American prisoners.

The sails were found floating on the lake, and six bodies washed ashore, but little else was found despite British searches.

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