In the early morning hours of 8 August, 1813, two American warships, the USS HAMILTON and SCOURGE, capsized and sank in a gale off Port Dalhousie, with the loss of fifty-three men, the largest single loss of life for the USN during the War of 1812.  In the nearby British flotilla that night was HMS LORD MELVILLE, which in January of 1814, would be renamed HMS STAR, our namesake.

USS SCOURGE had been the Canadian merchant vessel LORD NELSON.  A topsail schooner, she was illegally seized by the US before the war started.  She was armed with four six pounder guns and four four pounder guns with a crew of fifty. 

USS HAMILTON had been an American merchant vessel, the DIANA, purchased by the US and armed with eight twelve pounder carronades and swiveling 24 or 32 pounder “Long Tom”.  She also had a crew of fifty.

The general area of the wrecks was designated a National Historic Site in 1976 and title to the wrecks was passed to the City of Hamilton in 1978.

In 1979 the wrecks were discovered by the Canadian Coast Guard vessel, PORTE DAUPHINE, with Captain Archie Hodge, a Second World War veteran and long-time friend of STAR, in command.

In 1983, the City of Hamilton erected a Memorial Garden in Confederation Park on the shore of Lake Ontario with a naval mast, headstones for the 53 lost, and various commemorative plaques, copies of which are on display in HMCS STAR in the main stairwell