Walking the Berkshires

Shifting Seasons

This last day of August feels like someone pulled the switch and sent us abruptly into Autumn.  The sky is overcast and the air is almost too cool for short sleeves.  It is easy to believe that we could get our first frost by Labor Day, while in other years  I can often stretch another several weeks out of the garden. The nodding sunflowers and straggling tomato vines have the look of the end of the growing season to them, though maybe the cooler weather will drive back the clouds of mosquitoes so that I can confirm what is left of the harvest.  Thanks to the incredibly wet and buggy weather this summer, the lawn has certainly gone to seed and I'd like to get at least one more cutting done before the leaves start to fall.

The bright yellow bus that took my 1st and 4th graders to their first day back at school this morning looked as freshly scrubbed as they were today in their new clothes.  The trees are still that deep shade of summer green, but late season asters and goldenrods grow in profusion in the woodlands and along roadsides.  A restless humming bird visited the cardinal flowers and white turtleheads in my wildflower garden over the weekend.  

There are signs on every side that the seasons have cycled another quarter turn, and perhaps I feel them more acutely for having been driven inside for most of the summer by cool wet weather and profusions of insects.  We never did use the patio table, or watch the fireflies after dinner from our chairs in the the backyard.  I am looking forward, then, to the onset of crisp Autumn days with crackling leaves underfoot and nary a cloud or a biting pest to be seen.  Just as well that summer left before school began.

When the Terms of Victory Ensure a Lost Cause

I left the following in the comments of Kevin Levin's blog Civil War Memory, in response to a discussion about the Wal-Mart / Wilderness controversy:

Historic landscapes are increasingly rare in the intensively developed Eastern corridor of the United States. Just as habitat fragmentation reduces biodiversity, battlefield fragmentation eliminates some of its potential to inform and affect visitors and community identity. Rarely can land protection efforts realize the full conservation potential of a significant landscape, either as habitat or for its historic value. Where such opportunities still exist, it may well be a top conservation priority to invest all the time, treasure and creativity at society’s disposal to ensure that these landscapes maintain their full integrity.

How many American battlefields still have this potential? Antietam? Gettysburg? Saratoga? Not many more. And sadly, not the Wilderness.

Many, many other battle sites have not been isolated in time, where historic viewsheds can be maintained and the surrounding community becomes identified, for better or worse, by a signature event that occurred there long before living memory. If you want to interpret the site of Bunker Hill, you must contend with a obelisk in the midst of the Charlestown that rose from the ashes and a community whose residents have other sources of self and community identity. For some of us today, this is a regrettable loss,but for the generations who came after the Revolution, the monument was a fitting memorial and the idea that valuable real estate would be locked up in the interest of preservation would have made little sense.

There are many different values at play in situations like this. One thing I have learned in my years in the land protection business is that community support is vital if you want to conserve significant amounts of land, and there is no better way to derail a well-intentioned preservation effort then to let it become characterized as an imposition by outsiders – or worse, by Government – that values a rare species over the needs of local people, public land over private property, or the memory of something that happened long ago over the perceived needs of those who live there today. It may be a false dichotomy, but it can be lethal for conservation.

Places like the Wilderness are without a doubt under intense development pressure. It goes against our instincts to accept the loss of another irreplaceable acre of land with historic significance. Yet those terms of victory will ensure a lost cause.

On the other hand, there are many examples across this country, even in places typically thought of as intensely conservative and staunchly in favor of private property rights, where it is a condition of development permitting that lost wetlands and habitat be mitigated by the restoration or conservation of an equivalent amount at another location. What if Wal-Mart, as a condition of the permitting it received, had purchased for preservation another area of the Battlefield, perhaps with even greater significance? This would not have addressed all the impacts of development – traffic, for instance – but it could have been a creative solution and provided an outcome other than the zero sum game.

It would only be possible if those granting the permits, those working for preservation, those concerned about economic development, and the developers themselves were willing to work toward such an outcome. Sometimes, giving an inch is an unacceptable concession. Far more frequently, it can result in a negotiated compromise that provides benefits for more than just one side. This is a hard lesson, but one we need to grapple with before the next crisis that threatens the special places we value.

"Miranda" Unwrapped

Emily received an extraordinary quilt from her grandmother on her 9th birthday yesterday.  Mom is a gifted fabric artist, and her creations never fail to amaze.  Her incredible work has been well received at national juried quilt exhibitions, such as last year's Lowell Quilt Festival where her "Praise for the Morning" took third place in the small, non traditional category.

She is also exceptionally generous about passing her quilts along to those family members and close friends who would take the most delight in them.

Mom usually works from patterns of her own design and ideas that she has developed in her mind's eye. This is a small quilt which she completely as part of a master class taught by Christine Fries-Ureel, who made the pattern and showed Mom how to make the swirling fabric of the dress and stitch the windswept hair.  The quilt is called "Miranda", and is based on a Pre-Raphaelite painting by John William Waterhouse of Shakespeare's Tempest.  The sea foam is made from strands of sheep's wool, and the dress has unusual depth and three-dimensionality.

Mom excels at making "picture quilts, and as she was acquiring new skills in this class she had in mind her grand-daughter and her love of theater, faeries and myths.  "Miranda" has a proud place in a shaded corner of Emily's room, paired on the adjoining wall with the gorgeous, traditional mariner's star quilt her Gramma gave her on the year of her birth.  Boundless love radiates from every careful stitch and splash of color.

George Washington Catfight Cover Up; "Your Memory Must Be Very Perfidious."

"I will not be so impolite as to charge you with telling fals[e]hoods" wrote Caty Greene to her one-time friend Deborah Olney, "but your memory must be very perfidious." The incident referred to in this delicious 18th-century putdown took place at a dinner in which George Washington was guest of honor and was at the center of an imbroglio that began with a bit of larking about after too much drink and ended in a spoiled evening and the whiff of scandal.

Early biographies of George Washington tend toward hagiography, and the general's "family" or inner circle of staff officers zealously guarded his reputation against critics and conspirators during the darkest days of the Revolution.  And scandals there were, though as far as can be determined from the historic record these contretemps were mild by modern standards and his conduct was by no means ungentlemanly.

Washington was exceedingly fond of dancing, and there were numerous balls hosted during winter encampments for his officers, their wives and even a number of young ladies from further afield.  Nothing worse can be said of these affairs then they went on at great length, and at one in particular the General danced for three straight hours with a single partner: the vivacious Caty Greene, wife of General Greene.

Catherine "Caty" Littleton Greene was one of the most intriguing women of the Revolutionary era.  It was she who, later in life, hosted Eli Whitney at her Georgia plantation, during which he came up with his design for the Cotton Gin.  General and Mrs. Greene, though, were Rhode Islanders, and Caty Greene accompanied her husband on many of his campaigns and was known for her lively mind and temperament.

During the winter encampment at Morristown in 1779-1780 - the most extreme winter of the century and one of greater hardship for the Continental Army than even Valley Forge -  the Greenes and a number of other officers including their commander in chief were dinner guests of Colonel Clement Biddle,  a deputy quartermaster general serving under Greene. Also in attendance were George and Deborah Olney: fellow, well-connected Rhode Islanders and related to Nathaniel Greene.  George Olney, a civilian auditor hired by Greene's quartermaster department, is described rather uncharitably in one history as a "frail, susceptible youngster who could not hold his liquor well."  Whether or not he was a teetotaler, he apparently was not willing to drink the many droughts that customarily were downed in the officers mess, and when the ladies excused themselves after dinner and the men we preparing to drink in earnest, Olney joined his wife and the others.

Accounts of the incident differ at this point.  At the very least, the remaining men were in high spirits and considered his desertion of their revels something that must be rectified by a sortie which Washington himself agreed to lead.  According to a letter written at the request of Mr. Olney in defense of his wife's subsequent conduct, Washington's aide Tench Tilghman described the affair as nothing more than a light-hearted joke, in which it was "resolved that a party should be sent to demand him, and if the ladies refused to give him up, he should be brought by force."  Tilghman's letter, excerpted in Irving's life of Washington, went on to describe how an "attempt was made to rescue him.  The ladies came to the rescue.  There was a melee; in the course of which his Excellency seems to have had a passage of arms with Mrs. Olney.  The ladies were victorious, as they always ought to be..."  He assured Mr. Olney that his wife had made use of no expressions unbecoming of a lady of her breeding, nor had she given the slightest offense to the General.

The reason this letter needed to be written at all is that something altogether less amusing seems to have developed as this grand joke devolved into an unseemly altercation featuring first Deborah Olney and then Caty Greene.  Caty Greene's version of the events was rather injudiciously committed to paper in a letter to a mutual acquaintance of hers and Deborah Olneys.  Mrs. Greene stated that the General placed his hand on Deborah Olney's hand during the attempt to return her husband to the bosom of masculine company, and she responded in a rage, screaming that if he did not unhand her she would tear every hair from his head, and "though he was a general, he was but a man."

This is hardly conduct becoming a lady and rather marred the evening.  Caty Greene by her own admission rose to Washington's defense with an unbecoming temper, while her husband escorted the Olney's from the room and gave some pointed advice to his kinsman and subordinate regarding a situation that appeared needlessly to have gotten out of hand because he did not employ a more diplomatic means of refusing to drink with the General. 

This might have been the end of it, but word got out that something scandalous had happened and that Mrs. Olney had been the cause of it.  Whether or not she had intended her letter recounting Deborah Olney's outburst at the General to be kept in confidence, she must have known that their common friend would relay her words to Mrs. Olney, as indeed they were.  The Olneys found themselves snubbed by Providence society, and in March of 1781 each responded to repair their damaged reputations.  George Greene solicited the letter in their defense from Washington's aide Tench Tilghman, and right on its heels Deborah wrote a letter to Mrs. Greene that the latter characterized in her reply "as unbecoming as my temper was at Col. Biddle's."  She continued;

"I thought for some time the letter had been forged as I could have no idea of such a one from a lady of such good breeding.  Surely it is not the same Mrs. Olney that I used to know and love...As to your tearing out the Genls Eyes I heard nor said nothing...but you did say you would tear our his [hair] -and I can bring sworn evidence to the truth of it."

It is a classic example of the Hell that hath no fury like an 18th century gentlewoman with her back up, and closes with the conventional yet oddly out of place wishes for the felicity of the recipient of this scathing rebuke from her self professed "sincear (sp) friend and very Humble servant."  There follows, however, this coda, which caused no little alarm among the Olneys:

"I understand that Mr. Olney has said something of me which I am sure he would not have said had Genl Greene been at home and which I shall not mention to him until I hear again from Providence."  Deborah Olney's reply included her assertion on behalf of her husband that as Mrs. Greene "must have heard something he never did say he wishes to know what you have been told, and pawns his honor, if true, to own it."  Caty Greene never did give her adversaries the satisfaction of further details.

George Washington remained a friend and ally of Caty Greene for the rest of his life, while the George and Deborah Olney were never again in his orbit.  It seemed that whatever the cause of their affronts, they were out of their depth and outclassed by Washington's partizans, be they suble in the niceties of downplaying scandal like Tilghman, or a spitfire of sharp worded indigation like the fiesty wife of General Greene.  In any even, the official version made its way into the history books, but another take on the evenings misadventures resides in the correspondence between Deborah Olney and Caty Greene.

A Curmudgeon for our Times?

Not everything is highbrow here at Walking the Berkshires:  Exhibit A . 

"The dog don't like you planting stuff there. It's his backyard. If you're the only one who shits in something, you own it. Remember that." 

Probably what Poor Richard's Almanac would be today if Ben Franklin could Tweet.

Passings

Human beings are acutely aware of the passage of time.  We order our lives around it, reflect on our successes and disappointments as our memories lengthen and the past recedes.  We drown out the old year with excess and hedge our mortality by resolving to live more healthy lives in the new one.  Especially during times of personal transition, we note society's losses while contemplating our own.

Great Britain buried the last of its WWI combat veterans this summer (just three soldiers from the Great War still survive).  Very few people are alive today who even have memories of those terrible years.  They are living echos of a past that the rest of us only know as history. 

Then there are landmark deaths that seem to close out an era, or remind us of our youth and that our own experience is now part of history.  For many, Ted Kennedy's death is such a milestone, and it will certainly be packaged that way in the media.  I am too young to have been entranced by the Kennedy magic or outraged by Chappaquiddick. My grandmother couldn't stand the Kennedys but some of my cousins were close to them.  My personal awareness of Ted Kennedy began with the Democratic Presidential Primary battle in the summer of 1980, and - through several degrees of separation - with the 1962 Buick Skylark convertible that Ethel Kennedy sold to my Uncle.  I once saw him in a gray business suit standing alone outside T.F. Greene airport in Rhode Island with a small dog, and for such a large man at that moment he seemed frail and oddly vulnerable.  

I suspect it will be a different generation that feels nostalgia or personal connection to the death of Senator Kennedy than the one that felt the loss of Michael Jackson, or for that matter with the very few remaining soldiers of the Great War.  Their deaths shouldn't be about our own mortality, but even as we eulogize and reflect on the accomplishments of their lifetimes, we are always aware of the progress of our own.

Sages

Elias and I went to one of my favorite places yesterday, where the air rushes through the hemlocks and moss drips from overhanging stone.  Sages Ravine cleaves the eastern face of the Taconic Plateau along the Connecticut and Massachusetts border - there are old monuments here perched on the steep hillside delineating these territories - and unlike the other celebrated waterfalls of our region it gets very few visitors on a hot summer day.  Part of the reason may be that there is no sign marking the trail and no obvious place to park besides a worn pull off hard by the bridge that spans the stream as it makes its final plunge to the lowlands.  The old spur trail from here to the AT is obscured by dead fall.  This leaves it a special spot that locals know about: our own piece of primal wilderness.

The main attraction of Sages, besides the noticeably cooler air temperature on a sweltering day, are the dark pools and increasingly spectacular cataracts that descend the ravine.  The rocks are slick and treacherous, and one is always mindful that others have taken falls here from which they never recover.  The water is bracingly chill even in August, and the sunlight filters down in dappled splashes and broad shadows like the flanks of the wild brook trout.  There are great boles of fallen trees that snowmelt and floodwater pile up and push down the gorge from pool to pool.  It is a place of wild fascination, where in low water the stream dives beneath its bed and under hill until it emerges in a torrent from the rocky bank downstream. 

Elias is six, goat-footed, but still willing to hold my steadying hand.  We made out way through the laurels and the chestnut saplings to the first of the plunge pools, but I encouraged him that we would visit each in turn after first reaching the greatest of the waterfalls.  This part of Sages actually has one final pool above these falls, but it is wise not to try and reach it for the climb is perilous and the water dark and deep.  We stopped at the foot of this great cataract, the water still high for this time in August, and waded over the mound of alluvial stones pushed up at the edge of the water.  It was quickly over his head, but not the place to practice his newly acquired dog paddle.  We tried out each pool in succession, finding one that was broad and deep enough for both of us within our own comfort zones.  In a few minutes we were refreshed and ready for towels and the short walk back to our car.

I used to come to Sages alone, after work, and for a time before we had children Viv and I would drop into the cool of the trees for a dip on a humid afternoon.  Now my children are of an age and maturity where it is possible to share this place with them as well, to learn how to be in a wilderness of wary wonder.   

Research Notes from My Counterfactual Novel of the Revolution

I have rather specific research requirements for the counterfactual novel I am writing set within an American Revolution which takes a very different course after Washington's defeat and demise at Trenton.  Alternate history needs to be true to the details of the times to be convincing where it deviates from the actual course of events.  It also needs to be intelligible to a non-expert modern reader, without sacrificing the feel and sensibilites of the period it depicts.  This is why, I suppose, no one in costume dramas set in medieval England speak with accurate but unintelligble dialects. 

Still, I have had my fill of modern language in the mouths and minds of 18th century characters, which is why I was delighted by the gift of Richard M. Lederer, Jr.'s out of print Colonial American English (1965), a trove of words and phrases found in print in America during the first two centuries of English settlement.  

By no means a trained linguist, I still realize that distinctive regions of the American Colonies had strikingly different words and dialects used by people of different classes and origins, and that words in common usage in the 1600s might be obsolete by the time of the Revolution.  This book, however, offers many possibilities to judiciously sprinkle into the speech and observations of my characters, and add something of the flavor of their lives and experiences to my descriptions of what they see and do.

One of my characters might deplore the "soul drivers" who herded slaves from market to market, or comment that the introduced European Bee was unknown to the the indians who called it the "Englishman's fly".  A "chop-fallen" man would be dejected, while a "flying machine" was not an airship but rather a fast stagecoach.

Buckets were unknown in New England where pails prevailed.  Biblical phrases were common points of reference, while pipes, stones and oyster baskets had more earthy meanings.  New York's infamous "Holy Ground", a burned over district where most of the land was owned by the Anglican Church, was the largest open air brothel in North America, while strongly anti-catholic New Englanders knew that the "Scarlet Whore" was the papal church.

My next purchase is likely to be Albion's Seed, Four British Folkways America by the estimable David Hackett Fischer.  I am also reading up on the Jersey Dutch of the Neutral Ground, as well as the brilliant and troubling Rape and Sexual Power in Early America by Sharon Block. Just as war will warp the values and attitudes of peacetime, what happens to my characters in what becomes a prolonged insurgency of neighbor against neighbor as well as the power of Britain and its German allies will be determined, in part, by their origins, station and gender.  Tarleton's Quarter, which became synonymous with giving no quarter at all to prisoners, was not the invention of the men of these times, and the status of prisoners in this rebellion was one of the great policy dilemmas of the Revolution and lead to the deaths by callousness and neglect of tens of thousands of common soldiers and seamen.  Forgotten Patriots (2008) by Edwin Burrows is an excellent new book on this harrowing subject and how the memory of these casualties changed in the 19th century.

Out of the Frying Pan; Captain Gideon Olmsted, Privateer (part II)

His ship taken (and subsequently re-named Jamaica for service as a British warship); his crew impressed, imprisoned or scattered, and himself confined as a prisoner of war in the old fort at Montego Bay, Captain Gideon Olmsted had suffered cruel reversals as a privateer.  He endured a month of summer swelter in the fort before is circumstances changed.  The British armed sloop Active, Captain Underwood Commanding, had but 6 guns and a crew of 14 and lacked an experienced pilot to navigate the reefs of the Bahamas on a voyage to resupply the British in New York.  Captain Olmsted had just this knowledge from his peacetime voyages in the West Indies, and so one day he found himself brought before the owner of the Active, along with the Captain of the vessel, and offered a "compulsory" berth as second mate and trade captivity in the tropics for confinement in New York at the end of the voyage.

So it was that Olmsted and three other American prisoners, all Connecticut men but from a different ship than the poor old Polly, sailed on the Active bound for New York.  The cargo included rum, coffee, pimento and manufactured goods.  Provisions included sheep, goats, pigs, fowl and three large sea turtles.  They traveled in convoy lead by the Glasgow, and with Olmsted's assistance made their way safely through the Bahamas and even outdistancing many in the convoy as they rounded Cape Hatteras. To all outward appearances, Olmsted was a model prisoner.  Inside, he had no intention of rotting away in a prison hulk in New York harbor.

The Glasgow turned loose her charges on August 27th to make their way to New York under light escort, and Olmsted bided his time until the opportunity to strike presented itself.  It happened when they were on a course for Long Island, when Olmsted and seven picked men stood the watch shortly after midnight on September 6th, 1778.  His men, including the three Americans and others deemed the least threatening of the British crew had just come on deck when Olmsted ordered the gangway and afterhouse lashed tight.  A 4 pound gun and a swivel were aimed at the gangway and Olmsted spun the wheel and headed for Egg Harbor, New Jersey.

The Captain and two of the men below soon fired pistols through the companionway, wounding Olmsted but not disabling him, and threatened to blow up the ship if he did not surrender.  After daring each other to do their worst, Olmsted ordered the four pounder to fire into the cabin, and the fight continued for another day.  Spoons were melted for bullets, and efforts made to wedge the rudder, but by September 8th the British crew surrendered and the ship was Olmsted's prize.

It was an extraordinary feat of daring and heroism, but the laurels were soon to be snatched away, only this time by their own countrymen.  They were off Cape May when they encountered brig Convention, a Pennsylvania privateer under Captain Underwood that escorted them into Delaware Bay and on this basis claimed the Active as their prize.  Another privateer that was in the area when they sailed into the Bay also filed a claim, and The Philadelphia Admiralty Court under Judge George Ross, a Signer of the Declaration of Independence moved to condemn and sell the cargo even before Olmsted had the chance to make his claim.

Olmsted appealed this verdict and made his case for the Active as his lawful prize.  His prisoners all testified that he and not the Pennsylvanians had taken the ship, but a verdict awarded 3/4 of the proceeds to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and her native claimants, and but 1/4 to Olmsted and his men.  Olmsted appealed directly to the Court of Commissioners of Appeals of Congress, which on December 15th, 1778, ruled that the entire proceeds should be paid to Olmsted and the men who had seized the Active, but this was by no means the end of things, but only the beginning.

Olmsted's champion during his appeals was the military commander of Philadelphia, his fellow Nutmegger General Benedict Arnold.  Among the charges of misconduct subsequently brought against Arnold by Joseph Reed, President of Pennsylvania, was that his unworthy involvement had likely caused "the delay of justice in the courts of appeal."  This charge was dismissed as baseless but itself may have contributed to the erosion of Arnold's patriotism.

The value of the prize had been appropriated by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, converted to bonds and held by Judge Ross, the treasurer of Pennsylvania, who subsequently died in 1779.  As far as the Pennsylvania authorities were concerned, Ross held the bonds in a private capacity and they became embroiled in the settlement of his estate.  Olmsted has by this time returned home and then put to sea once more, and still had not received his full and lawful share.  He continued to fight for his claim for decades after the war was concluded, and it was not until 1809 that those who in the meanwhile had conspired to keep him from receiving his award were found guilty (and subsequently pardoned by President Madison).  Olmsted still maintained claims against Pennsylvania of roughly $30,000 at the time of his death in 1845.

All that was in the future.  In 1779 he commanded the Connecticut privateer Gamecock, and then in the Spring of 1780 he was master of the sloop Hawk, and during a successful cruise primarily in Long Island Sound he took several prizes, including the Brig St. Andrew.  That September he commanded the schooner Raven, and had another successful cruise.  But it was in 1782 that he set sail in command of the brigantine Nathaniel Greene (16 guns), only to be attacked well east of Nantucket Shoals by the British privateer Virginia (24 guns) , commanded by Captain Stanton Hazard of Halifax, and compelled to strike.  Olmsted was taken prisoner to New York, thus ending his revolutionary war service, but continued as a mariner and and unwavering defender of his legal claims against Pennsylvania, for many more years to come. 

He was 96 years old when he died.

Captain Gideon Olmsted, Privateer (part I)

The Olmsted family were among the first settlers of the Connecticut Colony.  One branch went on to help establish towns like Norwalk and Ridgefield, and we descend from them.  Another remained in central Connecticut, and can claim such notables as Frederick Law Olmsted in their pedigree.  They can also claim this dour looking fellow, a Connecticut privateer during the Revolution whose exploits lead to  one of the most notable legal battles in the early maritime of America.

Gideon Olmsted (b. 1748-49 d. 1845) began his Revolutionary service as a private soldier in George Pitkin's East Hartford Company of Spenser's militia regiment, and marched to the defense of Boston in the Spring of 1775.    In early 1776, however, Olmsted , previously an apprenticed seaman, took to the sea.  By the next year, he was master and part owner with his brother Aaron Olmsted and Abraham Miller, of a brand new sloop of 75 tons called the Seaflower.

Seaflower was a trim craft, but she lacked the one essential without which no privateer could flourish; she was without armament, and had great difficulty attracting a crew.  When she sailed into Long Island Sound at New London on November 7th, 1777 bound for the West Indies with a cargo of horses, swine, tobacco, onions, bricks and barrel hoops and staves, he had but seven crew and no cannon.  He made it to French Guadeloupe, but on the return voyage on April 6th, 1778, the Seaflower was taken by the British privateer Weir (Captain Williams commanding) and taken under a prize crew to New York.

Captain Olmsted and his crew remained prisoners on the Weir until they were eventually put ashore at Cape Francois on the Island of Hispaniola, from which they looked for opportunities to put to sea on a privateer.  In June, 1778, Captain Olmsted took command of the American brig Polly, whose owner had come to the area looking for a crew and with a number of blank commissions for officers under a Letter-of-Mark.  The Polly was a new vessel pierced for 16 guns. According to a 1933 biography of Captain Olmsted by Louis Middlebrook, most of the Americans in her crew were either commissioned or rated, with a Scotch sailing master, a French Lieutenant and Surgeon along with most of her petty officers and crew, a mulatto cook and even a few Spaniards.  A French merchant representing the owners of the Polly sailed as supercargo, and on July 4th, 1778, the Polly put to sea from Port au Prince on a privateering cruise northward.

Four days later while cruising off Jamaica, a ship approached flying British colors.  This was the ship-rigged sloop-of-war Ostrich, Captain Peter Rainier commanding: 200 tons burthen and armed with 16 carriage guns, cohorns and swivels and a crew of 110.  The Polly was a brig-rigged corvette of 200 tons mounting 16 cannon (6 and 9 pounders) along with nearly 2 dozen swivels and 102 men.  Olmsted, flying French colors, beat to quarters, and in response to a hail from the Ostrich, American colors were raised and a broadside unleashed.

The battle was fierce and bloody, with each ship maneuvering for advantage and broadsides blazing.  The Captain of the Ostrich was badly wounded early in the exchange and the master killed. As the afternoon wore on, the Polly was able to grapple the Ostrich and board her, during which Lieutenant O'Bryan of the Ostrich survived having his throat and larynx slashed by a pike.  The Ostrich caught fire and her colors were struck as many of her crew jumped overboard in expectation that the ship might explode.  The Polly likewise disengaged, but the fire was suppressed and the fight resumed once more.

The Ostrich endured another 30 minutes of fighting and all but her bow guns put out of action.  Yet just as victory seemed certain, another combatant entered the fray.  This was the British brig-rigged 'Lowestoffe''s Prize, a 10 gun vessel that had previously been an American from North Carolina and had been captured, as her new name suggests, by the Lowestoffe, a British frigate.  The prizemaster initially assigned to her had been a Lieutenant from the Lowestoffe by the name of Horatio Nelson.  Now the Lowestoffe's Prize turned the tide of battle, and at last Captain Olmsted was compelled to strike.  At least 36 of his crew were either dead or wounded.

Olmsted's initial voyages proved decidedly unsuccessful, and he was once again a prisoner. Yet the most remarkable exploit of his privateering career was soon to come.  We will pick up that part of this yarn in a subsequent post.