HMS Psyche, a frigate built in 1814 at the Chatham Royal Navy Shipyards in Great Britain, had a unique history as one of four pre-fabricated frigates and brigs planned by the Admiralty for service in the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain. It was the only frigate of the planned vessels that was actually assembled.
The construction of the frigate involved using fir frames, which were not ideal for a sea-going ship but suitable for Great Lakes usage. The components of the frigate were built in Great Britain and then dismantled for transportation across the Atlantic. The first parts arrived in Montreal in June 1814. In an effort to streamline the supply lines, William Forbes, a private contractor, was hired to transport the frames of Frigate B (Psyche) up the Saint Lawrence River for assembly at Kingston. The Royal Navy reportedly spent £300,000 on this endeavor. The decision to transport the frigate to Kingston was made due to the belief that suitable white pine, necessary for building frigates of that size, was scarce around Kingston. However, due to miscommunication, the Admiralty redirected the two pre-fabricated sloops to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and canceled the construction of the frigates. This communication reached Prévost, the British Governor-General of Canada, in October when Frigate B was nearly complete.
The frames of Frigate B were swiftly transported to Kingston by William Forbes and his workers, earning him a £1,000 bonus. Master Shipwright Thomas Strickland, along with Sir James Yeo and Robert Hall, re-designed and completed the frigate. The reconstructed frigate, named Psyche, featured a spar deck, increasing its armament from 38 to 56 guns. The vessel measured 130 feet in length between perpendiculars, with a beam of 36 feet 7 inches, a depth of hold of 10 feet 3 inches, and a draught of 9 feet 8 inches. Psyche had a tonnage of 7691⁄94 tons and a crew complement of 280 officers and sailors. Its armament included 28 24-pounder long guns on the lower deck and 28 32-pounder carronades on the upper deck.
On 31 October 1814, the keel of Psyche was laid at the Kingston Royal Naval Dockyard. It was launched on 25 December 1814 and completed in early 1815. Psyche joined the Lake Ontario squadron under Sir James Yeo. After Yeo’s replacement by Commodore Edward Owen on 19 March 1815, Owen raised his pennant on Psyche.
Following the end of the War of 1812, Psyche was placed on a slipway for preservation, as the Rush-Bagot Treaty of 1816 limited the navies on the Great Lakes to one gunboat armed with a single gun. The remaining fleet was disarmed.
In 1827, due to financial constraints and the deteriorating condition of the existing fleet, the Naval Commissioner decided to abandon refitting the existing vessels and focused on new construction. Starting in 1832, all the vessels at Kingston, including Psyche, were sold under the Whig government. The Kingston dockyard closed in 1835, and throughout the 1830s, Psyche was dismantled on the slipway in Kingston. Some hulks were left to decay in Navy Bay, while others were scuttled around Point Henry into Hamilton Bay (now Deadmans Bay). The exact fate of Psyche is uncertain. Some sources suggest the hulk was sold, while others claim it sank at its moorings. Another account identifies the halls in Deadmans Bay as those of Psyche and Prince Regent, with HMS Montreal located off Ceder Island. DeepQuest, a research group, identified Gunther’s wreck as HMS Montreal near Ceder Island, and subsequent surveys potentially confirmed this finding.
