HOLY COW! HISTORY: Central Park’s Revolutionary War cannon held explosive secret

You’ve seen them countless times. Military relics from long ago, now retired to places of honor in parks and monuments or positioned before county courthouses and state capitol buildings. One such antique artillery piece stood silent guard in the Big Apple for almost 100 years. And the whole time, it held a hidden secret no one knew. 

How the cannon wound up there is fascinating as the story’s surprise ending. And it all started with a bad decision.

After George Washington’s army was driven out of New York late in the summer of 1776, the British set about defending the place. One elevated spot in particular caught their eye: a commanding hill situated near today’s northeastern corner of Central Park, located close to modern East 107th Street and Fifth Avenue. There, they dug in. If Washington and his men ever returned, the Redcoats would be ready for them. But the Revolutionary War ended without another gunshot in Gotham.

Still, a wartime incident became a key part of our story.

On Nov. 23, 1780, as Capt. Charles Pole was trying to sail the 28-gun HMS Hussar out of the East River, he made a bad blunder. A really bad blunder, in fact. He tried to take a shortcut through a stretch of water so treacherous it was called Hell Gate, a lane of ominous jagged rocks and dangerous currents.

Sure enough, the Hussar slammed straight into one formation so big it had its own name, Pot Rock. She sank in 96 feet of water. Rumors soon began circulating that something else went to the bottom, too. (More on that in a moment.)

Fast forward some 30 years, when the young country was at war with Great Britain once again. In August 1814, British troops landed in Maryland, easily brushed aside a ragtag American army and leisurely set about burning the White House, the U.S. Capitol and other public buildings in Washington, D.C.   

When word of the tragedy reached New York, the populace panicked, fearing they might be next. Men set about erecting defenses. They went to the old, long-abandoned Revolutionary War fortification and furiously began making it even bigger and stronger. They also gave it a new name: Fort Clinton, in honor of DeWitt Clinton, the city’s mayor at the time.

It was all for naught. The British never showed up. However, tales about that sunken British warship never went away.

When the Hussar set sail in 1780, she was rumored to be carrying the British army’s payroll, allegedly somewhere between $2 million and $4 million in gold.

As early as 1810, adventurers used diving bells as they tried to reach the wreckage. In the 1850s, one man salvaged two of the Hussar’s cast-iron cannons, already almost a century old by then. In 1865, they were donated to a museum located in Central Park — until a faulty fireplace burned it down on Jan. 2, 1881.

The cannons disappeared for nearly 25 years. They eventually turned up in overgrown brush in 1905. Although Fort Clinton was long gone, the two barrels were mounted in the park where it had stood. For the next 70 years, people played, picnicked and had their photos taken standing beside them.

By the 1970s, time had taken its toll on the silent warriors. Their barrels were covered in graffiti, pollution and dirt. So they were taken down and placed in storage. By the 21st century, park officials decided it was time to restore the relics and return them to public display.

And then it happened. What came next made workers’ jaws drop.

Inside one cannon barrel, they found a cannonball, wadding and 1.8 pounds of live gunpowder. The artillery piece had been loaded for 233 years!

The restoration team called 911, which brought in the bomb squad. Authorities removed the cannon and safely destroyed the charge.

“We silenced British cannon fire in 1776, and we don’t want to hear it again in Central Park,” a NYPD statement said at the time.

Both cannons were then remounted inside Fort Clinton, where you can see them today.

As for the missing British fortune supposedly sitting at the bottom of the East River, no trace of it ever turned up. Nor is it likely to, since the Army Corps of Engineers cleared portions of Hell Gate with major explosions in 1876 and again in 1885, disturbing whatever remained of the wreck.

Still, a handful of old-time New Yorkers insist the gold remains down there. Which makes it deliciously ironic: they choose to believe in a fortune that never existed, without ever suspecting a real-life loaded gun was right under their very nose.

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