A civilian exodus from New York City had begun well before the British fleet arrived in the harbor.

The arrival the previous February of the first Continental Army troops in the city had prompted some people to pack up and leave, including Loyalists who were specifically targeted by the army and Patriots.

The capture of Long Island had only accelerated the abandonment of the city.

During the Continental Army's occupation of the city, many abandoned buildings had been appropriated for the army's use.

When the British arrived in the city, the property of Patriots had been confiscated for the British army's use.

Despite this, housing and other demands of the military occupation significantly strain the city's available building stock.

A quarter of the lower portion of Manhattan burns on September 21 in the Great New York Fire of 1776.

According to the eyewitness account of John Joseph Henry, an American prisoner aboard the HMS Pearl, the fire began in the Fighting Cocks Tavern, near Whitehall Slip.

Abetted by dry weather and strong winds, the flames spread north and west, moving rapidly among tightly packed homes and businesses.

Residents poured into the streets, clutching what possessions they could and found refuge on the grassy town commons (today, City Hall Park).

The fire crossed Broadway near Beaver Street, then burned most of the city between Broadway and the Hudson River.

The fire raged into the daylight hours and is stopped by changes in wind direction as much as by the actions of some of the citizenry and British marines sent, according to Henry, "in aid of the inhabitants."

It may also have been stopped by the relatively undeveloped property of King's College, located at the northern end of the fire-damaged area.

Estimates for the number of buildings destroyed range from four hundred to one thousand, representing between ten and twenty-five percent of the four thousand city buildings in existence at this time.

Among the buildings destroyed is Trinity Church; St. Paul's Chapel survives.

The fire is later widely thought to have been started by American saboteurs to keep the city from falling into British hands, though Washington and the Congress had already denied this idea.

It has also been speculated that the fire was the work of British soldiers acting without orders.

In the fire's aftermath, more than two hundred American partisans are rounded up by the British, among them Nathan Hale.

An account of Nathan Hale's capture will be written by Consider Tiffany, a Connecticut shopkeeper and Loyalist, and obtained by the Library of Congress.

In Tiffany's account, Major Robert Rogers of the Queen's Rangers saw Hale in a tavern and recognized him despite his disguise.

After luring Hale into betraying himself by pretending to be a patriot himself, Rogers and his Rangers apprehend Hale near Flushing Bay in Queens, New York.

Another story is that his Loyalist cousin, Samuel Hale, had been the one who revealed his true identity.