British warship HMS Ontario, which sunk on Oct. 31 1780, was found 500 feet below the surface in Lake Ontario. The ship is located somewhere between Niagara and Rochester, N.Y. The finding is the result of three years of painstaking searches by Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville.

The ship, which sank with 120 people onboard, including women and children, and allegedly 30 American prisoners, appears almost intact with both masts still in place. The ship lays upright on the lake's bottom and the two finders have not touched it, because they said it is a war grave.

HMS Ontario is the oldest shipwreck and the only fully intact British warship ever found in the Great Lakes, the two said. The ship may also be still the property of the British Admiralty. Its exact location is still being kept secret, possibly to prevent ransacking.

Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville hope to turn the underwater video they shot at the site into a documentary. The pair said they have over 80 minutes of video documenting their discovery, which took place on May 31 this year. "We knew it was the Ontario because it had two crow's-nests on it," Mr. Scoville said.

In searching for the shipwreck, the team used a special sonar device and a remote-controlled submersible developed with help from with students from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

It remains to be seen what will happen next, as the jurisdiction over the artifact is still subject to debate. The cold deep water has kept the shipwreck nearly intact, with two windows still unbroken. The great state in which the ship was found is hard to explain, as it went down in a powerful storm.