2nd Florida Light Artillery Battery B / Denham's Battery

10/05/2026

09/26/2026

The cannon had sat in Central Park for so long that nobody thought twice about it.

It came from the British frigate HMS Hussar, which went down in the churning waters of Hell Gate on November 23, 1780.

The Hussar's own pilot had warned against trying to run that stretch of the East River, and the captain tried it anyway.

The ship struck a rock, filled with water, and sank in 96 feet of water, reportedly with the British army's payroll still aboard.

More than eighty years later, in 1865, one of its recovered cannons was donated to New York City and eventually put on display in Central Park.

It stood there as a piece of scenery for generations, admired by picnickers who never imagined it was anything but decoration.

In January 2013, Central Park Conservancy workers pulled it into a shed to clean off the rust.

As they worked, they realized the barrel was not empty.

Packed inside was about 1.8 pounds of live black powder, wadding, and a cannonball, all of it more than two centuries old and still capable of firing.

The crew backed away and called 911.

NYPD's bomb squad arrived, confirmed the powder was still active, and hauled it off to a gun range for safe disposal.

A relic that had posed for photographs for a century and a half turned out to be a loaded weapon the whole time.

05/04/2026

May The 4th Be With You.