HMS St Lawrence (1814)
HMS St Lawrence was a 102-gun first-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy that served on Lake Ontario during the War of 1812.[1] Constructed in 1814, the ship's arrival on the lake ended all naval action and St Lawrence finished the war having never gone into battle.[2] The shipwrights constructed a vessel larger and more heavily gunned than the flagship of Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, HMS Victory.[6] The ship was ordered to remedy the imbalance between the Royal Navy and United States naval forces under the command of Isaac Chauncey on landlocked Lake Ontario.[7] At the time, Lake Ontario was effectively landlocked for any but the smallest vessels, due to shallow water and rapids on the St. Lawrence River downstream and Niagara Falls upstream.The construction of a first rate ship of the line, in a campaign that had been dominated by sloops and frigates, gave the British uncontested control of the lake during the final months of the war.