Kingswear is a village and civil parish in the South Hams area of the English county of Devon.

The village itself contains several small tourist-oriented shops and public houses, and is home to the Royal Dart Yacht Club.

However, it is believed that the settlement of Kingston, in the civil parish about 1 mile (1.6 km) to the east of the village, dates from the time of the Anglo-Saxons, with evidence of Stone Age settlers.

The first documentary mention of Kingswear was c.1170 when William de Vinci gave the local church half of the land in the village.

In 1636, settlers sailed from here to the mouth of the Piscataqua River in North America to found the town now known as Kittery, Maine.

The Royal Dart Hotel was constructed adjacent to the station, and provided accommodation for passengers waiting to sail to overseas destinations.

[7] During the Second World War the Royal Dart Hotel became HMS Cicala and headquarters of the British 15th Destroyer Flotilla.

[8] Journeys were made from there to the northern beaches of Brittany, landing agents and equipment for the French Resistance and bringing back escaping allied soldiers and airmen.

In recent history, Kingswear and the River Dart were used as filming locations for the films The French Lieutenant's Woman, Ordeal by Innocence and the television series The Onedin Line, where Kingswear represented the New World and Dartmouth the Old World, thus giving rise to the comments of the local tour guides that this was the shortest ever crossing of the Atlantic.