On 23 November 1780, against his pilot's better judgment, Hussar's captain, Charles Pole, decided to sail from the East River through the treacherous waters of Hell Gate between Manhattan Island and Long Island. HMS Hussar was a sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy, built in England in 1761-63. She was a 28-gun ship of the Mermaid class, designed by Sir Thomas Slade.

Just before reaching Long Island Sound, Hussar was swept onto Pot Rock and began sinking. Pole was unable to run her aground and she sank in 16 fathoms (29 m) of water. The British immediately denied there was any gold aboard the ship, but despite the difficulty of diving in the waters of Hell Gate, reports of $2 to $4 million in gold were the catalyst that prompted many salvage efforts over the next 150 years. This continued even after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers "blew the worst features of Hell Gate straight back to hell" with 56,000 pounds (25 t) of dynamite in 1876. Hussar's remains, if any survive, are now believed to lie beneath landfill in the Bronx.

On January 11, 2013, preservationists with the Central Park Conservancy in New York were removing rust from a cannon from Hussar when they discovered it still contained gunpowder, wadding, and a cannonball. Police were called and bomb disposal staff eventually removed about 1.8 pounds of active black gunpowder from the cannon, which was disposed of at a gun range. “We silenced British cannon fire in 1776 and we don’t want to hear it again in Central Park,” the New York Police Department said in a statement.

For more on the January 2013 incident: http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/13/us/new...html?hpt=hp_t2

Today's event is taken directly from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Hussar_(1763)