HMS Prince Regent (1814)

In October 2015 my brother Alan and I went in search of HMS Prince Regent, a frigate of the War of 1812 that had been abandoned some time before 1843 near Kingston on Lake Ontario. We found the hull at the head of Deadman Bay, well-preserved in shallow water but shrouded by weed and algae. The story of Prince Regent is fascinating because she had been built in Kingston and spent her entire career on Lake Ontario, and yet to look at she would have been virtually indistinguishable from a seagoing frigate of the Napoleonic Wars period. Her construction at Kingston, and that of several other ships – one of them, HMS St Lawrence, the largest warship of the Royal Navy at the time – was part of an arms race with the Americans to achieve dominance on the Great Lakes. Although she only saw action once, at the Battle of Oswego in 1814, her presence acted as a deterrent and helped to swing the war in favour of the British. The blog linked below contains a detailed account of her construction and history, and Alan’s film is an evocative record of our day diving on the wreck.