HMS Ontario 1780
Marker: recorded wreck position (Age of Sail).
Key facts
| Name | HMS Ontario | Wikidata label |
|---|---|---|
| Year lost | 1780 | English Wikipedia lead text (year following a loss verb, parsed) |
| Era | Age of Sail | derived from year |
| Ship type | sixth-rate frigate | Wikidata P31 instance of |
| Cause of loss | Storm or weather | Keyword match in English Wikipedia lead sentence |
| Nationality / flag | United Kingdom | Wikidata P137 operator → P17 country |
| Operator | Royal Navy | Wikidata P137 operator |
| Nearest coast | United States | Natural Earth (public domain) |
| Position | 43.4550, -78.3390 | Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0) |
About the wreck
HMS Ontario was a 22-gun snow of the Royal Navy that sank in a storm in Lake Ontario on 31 October 1780 during the American Revolutionary War. At 80 feet (24 m) in length, she was largest British warship on the Great Lakes at the time. The shipwreck was discovered in 2008. Ontario was found largely intact and very well preserved in the cold water. The wreck discoverers asserted that "the 80-foot sloop of war is the oldest shipwreck and the only fully intact British warship ever found in the Great Lakes."
Diving & visiting
Side-scan sonar technology was used in the search of HMS Ontario in late May 2008. A promising wreck was found between Niagara and Rochester, New York in an area of Lake Ontario where the depth exceeds 492 feet (150 m). The sonar imagery clearly showed a large sailing ship resting upright at an angle, with two masts reaching up at least 70 feet (21 m) above the bottom of the lake. The high resolution images showed the remains of two fighting tops, one on each mast, strongly suggesting that the sunken vessel was the brig-sloop Ontario.
Location
- Recorded position: 43.4550, -78.3390 (Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0); may be approximate)
- Nearest coast: United States
Wreck positions on this site are for interest only and are not for navigation. Many wrecks are war graves or legally protected: never disturb human remains or remove artefacts, and check local law before diving.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article HMS Ontario (1780) (revision 1327116863), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section and section(s) “Search and discovery”; condensed by selecting paragraphs; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.
Wreck facts from Wikidata (CC0).
Nearby wrecks
- Niagara Scow 73 km
- St. Peter 1898 · 99 km
- HMS Speedy 1804 · 131 km
- HMS St Lawrence 170 km
- HMS Wolfe 182 km
Browse more: North America wrecks · wrecks off United States · Age of Sail