The chilling words on a toppled gravestone disturbed passers-by for generations as they peeped up through the grass of a Connecticut cemetery.
‘Asa H. Havens, mate of Barque Glen was murdered by mutineers Sept 17, 1850, aged 37’, the epitaph flatly stated.
The young sailor had been gunned down by crewmates as he fought their attempts to seize a cargo of copper in the desolate waters off Chile.
Two men were eventually hanged for the killing but had Haven’s grateful captain really returned the young sailor’s body thousands of miles to his family for burial in the East Haddam plot?
Now group of local veterans has finally solved the mystery that puzzled the town for nearly two centuries.
‘I never really questioned it,’ local historian Dr Karl Stofko admitted. ‘But a lot of other people did.’
VFW volunteers dubbed the ‘Cemetery Troopers’ were intrigued by the grave as they surveyed and restored veteran graves in East Haddam, Connecticut
The chilling epitaph had lost none of its power as it lay toppled in North Plain Cemetery
The Glen was a 287-ton sailing ship which plied the busy American shipping routes when steamships were still in their infancy.
It had been built just 230 miles up the coast in Freeport, Maine, but it was in California that the young New Englander is thought to have stepped aboard for the first time.
It had arrived in San Francisco with 200 tons of lumber in July 1849 as the state was gripped by the California Gold Rush and its captain Charles B. Small decided to leave it in Sacramento while he joined the thousands of prospectors trying their lucks in the hills and gullies of the Sierra Nevada.
Weeks later he returned to his boat empty-handed before welcoming Havens on board as part of his new crew for the 14,000-mile journey back to New England.
The mystery grave even had a footstone
With no gold to fill his hold, the captain stopped in Valparaiso, Chile, to pick up a cargo of copper ore worth $12 million at today’s prices, along with 2,000 bales of cinchona bark used to make the anti-malarial remedy, quinine.
He also picked up four new crew members who determined to steal the cargo before the ship had even left port.
Havens had remained on board after being promoted to second mate and was lucky to escape being poisoned as the ship’s cook targeted the officers’ food.
Captain Small and first mate George Waite fell violently ill after dining on a meal of turtle soup just days after leaving Chile.
The pair managed to recover but two weeks later the captain was awoken in his cabin by the sound of musket fire and a cry of ‘murder’ from Havens on the upper deck.
Rushing outside he discovered that the ship’s armory had been seized by his mutinous crew, and Havens clinging mortally wounded to a mooring post.
The cook and another sailor ordered him at gunpoint back to his cabin threatening to ‘blow his brains out’ while they took control of the ship.
Local dentist and amateur historian Dr Karl Stofko doubted any remains were in the grave
Ken Beatrice called in favors from old colleagues in the Office of Archeology to have soil analysis conducted on samples from the site and deploy ground penetrating radar
But the plotters had overlooked the captain’s stash of cutlasses and Small grabbed a sword before escaping out of his cabin window and charging the ringleader.
First mate George Waite joined him, and the pair managed to overpower the mutineers to retake the ship.
Havens was dead, Waite was badly injured and most of the crew was in leg irons leaving the captain to sail the ship almost single-handedly back to Valparaiso where he handed the conspirators to the US Consul.
The US Navy transported the arrested men in a sloop of war to New York where their trial became a media sensation.
Edward F Douglass and Thomas Benson were convicted of Havens’ murder after a mutineer turned state’s evidence and both were executed in July 1851.
But what had become of their murdered shipmate?
‘A newspaper, I think it was the New York Herald in 1850, had an article and it stated that Asa was wrapped in a blanket and buried at sea off the coast of Chile,’ said Dr Stofko.
But had the captain really just tossed his loyal lieutenant overboard and continued on his way?
The ship’s insurers awarded $500 to Havens’ mother and an impressive marble slab was erected next to the other graves in the East Haddam cemetery.
‘His gravestone had a foot stone,’ archaeologist Ken Beatrice told the Hartford Courant.
‘And the footstone had his initials on it. And that sort of indicated that, ‘Yes there was a burial there’. ‘That got us talking.’
Three years ago the town’s VFW post appealed for volunteers to survey the East Haddam’s cemeteries for veteran graves that had fallen into disrepair.
The volunteers dubbed themselves the ‘Cemetery Troopers’ and began the painstaking work of documenting thousands of graves in the town’s 23 cemeteries.
They discovered more than 230 unmarked veteran graves dating back to the War of Independence, but were intrigued by the stark epitaph on the sailor’s tombstone.
‘Asa was the talk,’ Beatrice said.
‘We were always talking about him. And then we finally did some research on him and that’s what got my interest.’
Dr Stofko remained a sceptic.
The amateur historian and professional dentist thought the matter was settled when he tried probing the grave with a long steel rod and found the ground was unyielding.
‘That means the ground was never dug up,’ he said.
‘Most graves you can probe fairly easily with a probing rod because the earth has been dug up.’
The Troopers have documented thousands of graves in the town’s 23 cemeteries, discovering veterans dating back to the War of Independence
The young sailor’s gravestone has been restored as the mystery is finally laid to rest
But the Troopers were unsatisfied. It was not uncommon for bodies to be preserved in a barrel of spirits after dying on long sea voyages and Havens was a hero who had saved his captain along with his valuable cargo.
‘They couldn’t understand why anybody would put up a grave marker if there wasn’t anybody in the ground,’ Stofko said.
The Troopers began restoring Havens’ headstone and Beatrice called in favors from old colleagues in the Office of Archeology to have soil analysis conducted on samples from the site and deploy ground penetrating radar on the mystery grave.
The radar suggested the ground had been disturbed at some time in the distant past, but Beatrice said the soil analysis put the matter beyond doubt.
The earth beneath the surface showed a clear delineation between the dark topsoil and the lighter sandy-colored subsoil indicating that the two had never been mixed up as they would have been if a grave had been dug.
‘The Asa Havens mystery has been solved,’ Beatrice concluded.
‘He was not brought home to his family and interred in the North Plain Cemetery. Asa was given to the depths of the sea.’
‘We were really hoping that we were going to find something,’ he added. ‘We really wanted to find something.
‘But it was fun.’
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