18th century British warship HMS Ontario found intact in Great Lake

A British warship which sank during the American War of Independence has been found in remarkable condition at the bottom of Lake Ontario.

The crows nest and foremast of the sunken 228-year-old British warship HMS Ontario Credit: Photo: AP

HMS Ontario had long been regarded as one of the "Holy Grail" shipwrecks and is the oldest shipwreck and only fully intact British warship ever found in the Great Lakes.

The 22-gunship was lost with barely a trace and as many as 130 people aboard during a gale in 1780.

It was found by shipwreck enthusiasts Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville using side-scanning sonar and an unmanned submersible

Historian Arthur Britton Smith, whose book The Legend of the Lake chronicles the history of the HMS Ontario, said: "To have a Revolutionary War vessel that's practically intact is unbelievable. It's an archaeological miracle."

The 80ft sloop of war was found to have been astonishingly well-preserved by the cold, deep waters of the lake.

Kennard and Scoville said they regard it as a war grave and have no plans to raise it or remove any of its artifacts. They said the ship is still considered the property of the British Admiralty.

Although the vessel sits in an area where the water is up to 500ft deep and cannot be reached by anyone but the most experienced divers, Kennard and Scoville refused to give its exact location in a bid to deter scavengers, saying only that it was found off the southern shore.

The sloop was discovered resting partially on its side, with two masts extending more than 70 feet above the lake bottom.

Two crow's nests on each mast - a rare feature - helped identify the ship, as did the carved scroll bow stem. The explorers also found two cannons, two anchors and the ship's bell. The quarter galleries on either side of the stern, which housed the officers' quarters, were beautifully preserved.

Scoville said: "Usually when ships go down in big storms, they get beat up quite a bit. They don't sink nice and square. This went down in a huge storm, and it still managed to stay intact. There are even two windows that aren't broken. Just going down, the pressure difference, can break the windows. It's a beautiful ship."

Smith, who was shown underwater video of the find, said: "If it wasn't for the zebra mussels, she looks like she only sunk last week."

The dark, cold freshwater of Lake Ontario acts as a perfect preservative, Smith said. There is no light and no oxygen at that depth to aid decomposition, and little marine life to feed on the wood.

HMS Ontario went down on October 31, 1780, with a garrison of 60 British soldiers, a crew of about 40, mostly Canadians, and possibly about 30 American war prisoners.

The warship had been launched only five months earlier and was used to ferry troops and supplies along the border of New York state. Although it was the biggest British ship on the Great Lakes at the time, it never saw battle, Smith said.

After the ship disappeared, the British conducted a sweeping search but tried to keep the sinking secret from General George Washington's troops because of the blow to British defences and morale.

Hatchway gratings, the binnacle, compasses and several hats and blankets drifted ashore the next day. A few days later the ship's sails were found adrift in the lake. In 1781, six bodies from the Ontario were found near Wilson, New York.

But for the next two centuries, there were no further traces of the ship.

Explorers had been searching for the Ontario for decades, and there have been numerous false finds over the years, said Eric Bloomquist, interpretative programmes manager at Old Fort Niagara.

Kennard, an electrical engineer who has been diving for nearly 40 years and has found more than 200 wrecks in the Great Lakes, Lake Champlain, the Finger Lakes and in the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, began searching for the Ontario 35 years ago, but quit after several frustrating and fruitless years.

He teamed up with Scoville, a diver who developed the remote-controlled submersible with students from the Rochester Institute of Technology, six years ago. The pair have since found seven ships in the lake.

Over the years, Kennard obtained documents from British and Canadian archives on the Ontario, including the ship's design plans. Even then, it took the pair three years of searching more than 200 square miles before they found the vessel earlier this month.

After locating the wreck with the sonar, the explorers used the submersible to confirm their find, chronicling their discovery with more than 80 minutes of underwater video.

Carrie Sowden, archaeological director of the Peachman Lake Erie Shipwreck Research Centre of the Great Lakes Historical Society in Vermillion, Ohio, said: "Certainly it is one of the earliest discovered shipwrecks, if not the earliest. And if it's in the condition they say, it's quite significant."

Kennard said he and his partner have gathered so much video evidence that it will not be necessary to return to the site. He added that they hope to make a documentary about the discovery.

There are an estimated 4,700 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, including about 500 in Lake Ontario alone.