Witching Hour - Strange History: The Amherstburg warship sent toward Niagara Falls

Witching Hour - Strange History Built at Amherstburg in 1813, the warship Detroit was captured in the Battle of Lake Erie. In 1841 showmen bought her old hull to send over Niagara Falls. She ran aground in the rapids and broke up before the drop.

Topics: Witching Hour

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Witching Hour is our nightly local history and folklore feature. Ghost stories and legends are retold as stories people tell, not reported as fact. Sources are listed below the story.

Tonight's Witching Hour is not a ghost story. It is the strange afterlife of a warship built on the Detroit River at Amherstburg.

The ship

From 1796 to 1813, the British navy yard at Amherstburg was the naval station for Lakes Erie and Huron. Parks Canada lists the ships built there, ending with the Detroit. Work began during the War of 1812, and the yard was short of shipwrights, seamen and supplies. The Detroit was launched in July 1813 and became the flagship of Cmdr. Robert Barclay.

On Sept. 10, 1813, Barclay's squadron met Oliver Perry's American squadron in the Battle of Lake Erie. The British lost, and the Detroit was captured, so badly damaged that the Americans took her into Put-in-Bay, Ohio, to keep her from sinking. On Sept. 22, the British burned the Amherstburg navy yard and withdrew.

After the war

The Americans sank the old warships in Misery Bay, near the naval station at Erie, Pa., to preserve them. In 1825 the U.S. Navy closed its Lake Erie station and sold the ships. In the 1830s the Detroit was raised and fitted out as a trading ship, and she carried cargo on the Great Lakes for some years.

The odd part

In 1841 the old hull was bought to be sent over Niagara Falls as a spectacle, by what the U.S. Navy later called "speculators, showmen, and hotel keepers." Sending ships over the falls drew thousands of people in that era. The Detroit never made the drop. She ran aground in the rapids above the falls and broke up there.

An old Niagara guidebook told visitors to look up the rapids, where they could see the hull of the ship Detroit, "with 'VETO' painted on her sides."

Parks Canada says the site of the navy yard sits on the Detroit River waterfront near Fort Malden National Historic Site.