This is John Batchelor, speaking with Professor Benjamin Carp about the suspects who

who never solved the great New York fire of 1776, a lost story of the American Revolution.

The whole of the West Side is wiped out. All of it, all the docks, all the Kays, burn, down.

And right after the defeat of Washington's forces at Harlem Heights,

right after the defeat of Washington's forces on the Battle of Long Island,

right after the House come to town to take possession of New York Harbor,

and the fire.

Never solved. The Americans blamed the British. The British blamed the Americans, the colonials. However, there were suspects. One of them was Abraham

Van Wyck, leader of the grenadiers. Professor Karp speaks to him here in his fate. Note that George Washington endorsed Van

Mike and other captains who were suspect by the British of having set the fires. Never solved.

More of this tonight. Yeah, George Washington sticks up for all three of these captains that we're talking about one way or another.

Abraham Van Dyke was a New Yorker. He owned a tavern on the corner of Broadway and John Street.

And he was the captain of a local militia company called the Grenadiers. And he doesn't make it out of New York when the American Army retreats on September 15th.

And he seems to have been captured shortly after the 15th.

But then there's also reports of him being captured again on the 21st. And the only way that that could have happened is if the British Army had let him out on parole in the intervening days, which they sometimes did with enemy officers.

But the British Army definitely accuses him

of either having been setting the fires

or having been part of the planning to burn New York,

and they keep him in prison for 18 months,

and he suffers there,

and his friends try and stick up for him

and try and get him exchanged for British prisoners.

...