 Point Frederick served as the Lake Ontario base of the British naval establishment and the headquarters of the senior naval officer on all the Great Lakes from 1789–1813.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, , was built in 1809 and launched in Navy Bay specifically for fighting on the lakes, but she was not immediately commissioned.