Shipwrecks
HAMILTON AND
SCOURGE WRECKS
Hamilton Port Dalho St. Cath
A cannon remains squarely in place at its gun port on deck. Note the sabre above, at the ready for boarding crews
functional in waves of one-metre or less, which we learned are rare on Lake Ontario. Then in the spring of 2002 the team suffered a devastating loss that brought the project to a crashing halt, and changed us all.
Historical Context
But let me backtrack a little first. Hamilton and Scourge were casualties of foul weather that arose during an inconsequential battle of the largely forgotten war of 1812- 14, which was the North American extension of Europe’s Napoleonic wars. The British Navy was formidable and while the U.S. fleet could not pose any direct challenge on the high seas, an attack on its northern colony of Canada had merit though ultimately the strategy proved unsuccessful and today Canadians remember this war as their victory. The Scourge was a war prize, a 50-foot (15m) Canadian merchant schooner called the Lord Nelson, taken by the U.S. Navy brig Oneida days before the U.S. declared war on Great Britain. She was renamed and armed with 10 long guns, a mix of four and six pounders on her top
40 Magazine
deck. The Hamilton began life as the Diana, a 75-foot (23m) American merchant schooner purchased by the U.S. Navy in 1812. She was armed with eight 18-pound carronades and one 12-pound long gun mounted on a pivoting slide center amidships. On August 7, 1813, a U.S. Navy squadron of 13 ships and a Royal Navy squadron of six vessels were manoeuvring for an advantage that neither was able to gain. No shots were fired and everyone settled in for the night and because it was so calm sails were left ready for action in the morning. At 2 a.m. a squall swept across the lake engulfing both squadrons and capsizing Hamilton and Scourge, both dangerously top heavy with their retrofitted deck guns. They sank so quickly that only 16 of 76 sailors survived.
The search for these two wrecks began in 1971 under direction of Dr. Dan Nelson, an associate archaeologist at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). In 1973 a vessel from the Canadian Centre for Inland Waters (CCIW) located the wrecks using side-scan sonar. As a matter of course the U.S. Navy asserted
ONTARIO
Te only way to avoid incidents is to not visit the wrecks…if that’s the plan then why bother protecting them at all
Centre top:
shooting video on the Scourge.
Tech gear set for the deep dives.
Map: X marks the spot of wrecks
in relation to the lakeshore.
ownership, which was subsequently transferred to the ROM and, in turn, to the City of Hamilton, with the understanding certain U.S. Navy conditions would be met. They included, in part, scientific study of the wrecks to determine the feasibility of raising one or both of the vessels for appropriate conservation and display at a suitable venue with care taken for the removal and repatriation of any human remains. Between 1975 and 2012 seven different expeditions photographed the wrecks using ROVs. The first video of Hamilton was shot in 1975. During one of those early expeditions an ROV’s umbilical, or perhaps a heavy barge anchor, became entangled in the Hamilton’s forward mast, tearing it off and dropping it on the lakebed. In 1980 a Jacques Cousteau expedition filmed the Hamilton using Calypso’s
Photos: Hamilton-Scourge Foundation-Dan Nelson, Chris Nicholson, Emory Kristof/National Geographic
Map: Richard Schlecht/National Geographic Stock
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