TO THE BRINK

A wronged privateer seeks justice from the fledgling American government in John and Nancy Lankenau’s nonfiction account.

Gideon Olmsted was a Connecticut sailor who answered the Continental Congress’s call for privateers to harass British shipping during the Revolutionary War. After losing a vessel in engagements with the British, Olmsted was obliged to join the crew of a British merchant sloop, the Active, under the command of captain John Underwood. Grateful for Olmsted’s aid in bringing the sloop through a squall, Underwood intimated that he would release Olmsted before reaching port in New York. Learning from another crew member that Underwood planned to betray him, Olmsted convinced three fellow American sailors onboard the Active to help him take the ship as a prize. Unfortunately for Olmsted, another American ship—the Convention, owned and outfitted by the colony of Pennsylvania— intervened, claiming the Active as its own and cheating Olmsted and his compatriots out of the reward that was their due. The Lankenaus follow Olmsted’s subsequent efforts to reclaim his share of the Active’s lucrative cargo, an endeavor complicated by the involvement of Philadelphia’s military governor, General Benedict Arnold, whose offer to sponsor Olmsted’s case in the Admiralty Court (for half of any recovered prize money) was one of several profiteering schemes leading to his downfall. The authors further explore how Pennsylvania’s vital contributions to the war effort worked to skew justice in favor of the actions of the Convention’s captain and crew. Drawing on primary sources (including correspondence and court records), the Lankenaus employ reconstructed dialogue to propel the narrative, with mixed results; an overuse of dialogue tags in some passages makes for tedious reading, and some unnecessary details veer too close to fiction. Quotations taken verbatim from extant sources are more effective, and Olmsted’s story is strong enough to stand on its own without creative embellishment. Despite these stylistic missteps, this retelling of Olmsted’s convoluted legal journey, which “offer[s] a panoramic view of a young and growing republic,” is worth exploring.

An imperfect but engaging look at early American justice.