Kingston Royal Naval Dockyard - History

History

A government wharf was constructed in 1783 on the eastern side of Lake Ontario by Major John Ross of the 34th Regiment. When the Provincial Marine relocated from Carleton Island to Kingston, Point Frederick was established as a naval depot in 1789. The quarter-master-general`s department of the army, who had a monopoly of shipping on the Great Lakes, built transport schooners of the Provincial Marine on Point Frederick by 1792. In 1809 a heavily-armed, three-masted square-rigged vessel, `HMS Royal George (1809)` was built and launched in Navy Bay specifically for fighting on the lakes.

Kingston Royal Naval Dockyard was the only Royal Navy base on Lake Ontario, countering the American naval base a short distance away in Sackets Harbour, New York during the War of 1812. During the War of 1812 attacks were launched from the dockyard on the American bases at Sackets Harbour, and Oswego. On 10 November 1812, at the beginning of the War of 1812, the Americans pursued `HMS Royal George (1809)` into Kingston harbour and were held off by the shore batteries.

Commanded by Commodore Sir James Lucas Yeo, the Royal Navy took over operations on the Great Lakes from the Provincial Marine in 1813. A stone building, built around 1813, was used as a naval hospital during the War of 1812 and is now known as the Ordnance storekeeper`s quarters. After the Rush-Bagot Treaty of 1817, the role of the dockyard diminished. A blacksmith shop, which was built in the dockyard in 1823 is now used by the Royal Military College of Canada. Half of the Royal artificer`s cottages, which were built in 1822, were destroyed by a fire in the 1880s.

The War of 1812 has been known as the shipbuilders war. Ships were built on Point Frederick by the successive commissioners of the dockyard, Captain Richard O`Conor and Sir Robert Hall. Under the terms of the Rush-Bagot agreement of 1817, naval forces on Lake Ontario were restricted to one gunboat. Nevertheless, Sir Robert Hall maintained the ships of the fleet in ordinary until his death in 1818. His replacement, Captain Robert Barrie built a Stone Frigate to warehouse the gear and rigging from the ships, which were dismantled and housed in Navy Bay. After the wood barracks burned down in 1816, the Stone Frigate became the main building on Point Frederick. Captain Robert Barrie was recalled and the war ships, which were by the early 1830s merely hulks, were actioned off.

Closed in 1835, the dockyard reopened in 1837 in response to rebellions in the Canadas. Captain Williams Sandom and a party of sailors resided in the Stone Frigate warehouse close to the St. Lawrence pier in Navy Bay. Their headquarters was HMS Niagara, one of the 1812 hulks which had been repurchased. Steamships were hired to transport regulars and militia from Kingston at the Battle of the Windmill, near Prescott. Steam warships operated from the dockyard. An old wooden blockhouse protected the battery at the end of Point Frederick. Four stone Martello towers were built along the shore to defend Kingston's harbour after the Oregon Crisis. One of the towers, known as Fort Frederick was built by Royal Engineers on Point Frederick near the old dockyard. The dockyard closed in 1853.

A wooden commodore`s house, which was shown on a plan dated 1868-70, was still standing when the Royal Military College of Canada opened in the 1876. By the 1860s, only the Stone Frigate storehouse and one wharf were kept in repair. The old hulks of the War of 1812 were hard aground in the mud and broken by the annual freezing and thawing of Navy Bay and Deadman Bay.

The ordnance and admiralty lands in Kingston, which included the dockyard on Point Frederick, were transferred to the Canadian government on the condition it should not be used for anything but naval purposes. An order in council ratified the agreement adding the phrase and for the naval defence of Canada.

The site was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1928.