HAPPY 200th – ST. LAWRENCE
The “Giant”, HMS ST. LAWRENCE, rounds Point Frederick and heads into Navy Bay accompanied by Prince Regent, Princess Charlotte, and Netley Sep 1814.
Dateline Kingston: 10 September 1814, the largest ship the Royal Navy ever launched in fresh water during the age of sail enters Navy Bay.
A first-rate ship of the line, she carried 112 guns, was 194 feet long, and displaced 2,304 tons. Commodore Yeo made her his flagship and appointed Captain Frederick Hickey as Flag Captain. During the War of 1812, control of the lake passed back and forth between contending forces. But in its final months the Anglo-Canadians held sway. While ST. LAWRENCE never saw action, her sustained and powerful sailing presence and the success of the Royal Naval Dockyard, with two more first-rate ships (CANADA and WOLFE) in the stocks, denied the enemy lake dominance and secured the vital supply and communications routes west.
After the war HMS ST LAWRENCE was decommissioned and its hull used as storage for a local Kingston brewery. Later it was sunk close to shore in Kingston harbour (near the Tett Centre for Creativity and Learning), where its remains, in shallow water, have been explored by divers and underwater archaeologists.
The site below discusses St Lawrence and has a video of what remains today.