The British naval forces on the lakes, known as the Provincial Marine, followed the practices and rank structure of the Royal Navy, but with some flexibility.

The Provincial Marine were established and controlled by the army and manned by personnel borrowed from the navy, by soldiers, and by direct recruitment of Great Lakes sailors.

[1] A government wharf was constructed in 1783 on the eastern side of Lake Ontario by Major John Ross of the 34th Regiment, who was responsible for settling Loyalists at Cataraqui (what is now Kingston) between 1783 and 1785.

The merchants who handled transshipment of stores at Carleton Island, using Provincial Marine vessels, built wharves and warehouses near old Fort Frontenac.

[1] 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.

Because relations with the United States were rapidly deteriorating, a heavily armed, three-masted square-rigged vessel, HMS Royal George, was built in 1809 and launched in Navy Bay specifically for fighting on the lakes, but she was not immediately commissioned.

After May 1813, when the Royal Navy units under Commodore Sir James Yeo took command of the facility, it grew rapidly.

On 10 November 1812, at the beginning of the war, the Americans pursued HMS Royal George into Kingston harbour and were held off by the shore batteries.

[4] Commanded by Commodore Sir James Lucas Yeo, the Royal Navy took over operations on the Great Lakes from the Provincial Marine in May, 1813.

Yeo captured Oswego and then blockaded Sackets Harbor on 6 May 1814; he was reinforced by two frigates built on Point Frederick.

Ships were built on Point Frederick by the successive commissioners of the dockyard, Captain Richard O'Conor and Sir Robert Hall.

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.

When Bill Johnson's "Hunter Patriots" invaded Canada below Prescott, Sandom carried the militia on his steam vessels to defeat the insurgents at the Battle of the Windmill.

The wooden paddle-wheel steam tug St. Andrews, the sailing steamer Hercules, the Canada, and the Royal patrolled from Montreal to Kingston, where they used the facilities at Point Frederick and at Navy Bay.

A wooden commodore's house, which was shown on a plan dated 1868–1870, was still standing when the Royal Military College of Canada opened in the 1876.

[6] Commodore Rene Hypolite Pepin de Laforce, a naval officer, was appointed to command the Provincial Marine on Point Frederick on 15 November 1780 – 1786.

Commodore Hugh Earle, a son-in-law of Molly Brant who had been commissioned in the Lakes Service in 1792, commanded the Provincial Marine from 1812 to 1813.

Commanded by Commodore Sir James Lucas Yeo, the Royal Navy took over operations on the Great Lakes from the Provincial Marine in 1813–1815.

Sir Robert Hall, K.C.B., who was ordered to establish a "respectable naval force", took command of the Lakes Service in October 1815 – 1818.

In 1817, the Rush-Bagot agreement limited future naval forces in commission on each lake to a single 100-ton gunboat armed with one gun.

To house the gear of the warships of 1812 laid up in Navy Bay, Captain Barrie built the Stone Frigate in Kingston Dockyard.

Vessels were hurriedly bought and armed and manned by sailors from the fleet who made use of the facilities at Point Frederick and of Navy Bay while patrolling from Montreal to Kingston.

[8] A model by master modeler, Louis Roosen, depicting HMS St. Lawrence (1814), (mounting 102 guns) the only 1st Rate Royal Navy Ship-of-the-Line to sail on Lake Ontario during the War of 1812, was presented to the Royal Military College of Canada Commandant, Brigadier-General Tom Lawson on 22 April 2008.