By mid-1780, the British position in New York was precarious as a French army had joined forces with General George Washington's troops north of the city.

When Admiral Sir George Brydges Rodney took his twenty ships of the line south in November, it was decided that the army's payroll be moved to the anchorage at Gardiners Bay on eastern Long Island.

The minutes of the Royal Navy's court martial into the loss of the frigate (record held at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich), make no mention of any payroll money or other special cargo aboard.

On 11 January 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.

[2] In Kim Stanley Robinson's 2017 science fiction novel New York 2140, a sub-plot centers on an attempt to recover two chests with gold from the wreck of HMS Hussar that lies buried under a submerged parking lot in the former Bronx.