The chilling words written on a toppled headstone disturbed passersby for generations as they gazed across the grass of a Connecticut cemetery.
“Asa H. Havens, companion of Barque Glen, was murdered by mutineers on September 17, 1850, at the age of 37,” the epitaph stated flatly.
The young sailor had been shot dead by his crewmates while fighting off their attempts to seize a cargo of copper in the desolate waters off Chile.
Two men were eventually hanged for the murder, but had Haven’s grateful captain really returned the young sailor’s body thousands of miles away to his family for burial in the East Haddam plot?
Now, a group of local veterans has finally solved the mystery that has baffled the city for nearly two centuries.
“I never really questioned it,” admitted local historian Dr. Karl Stofko. “But a lot of other people did.”
VFW volunteers, nicknamed ‘Cemetery Troopers,’ were intrigued by the grave as they inspected and restored veterans’ graves in East Haddam, Connecticut.
The chilling epitaph had lost none of its power as it lay toppled in the North Plain Cemetery.
The Glen was a 287-ton sailing vessel that plied busy American shipping routes when steamships were still in their infancy.
It had been built just 230 miles off the coast in Freeport, Maine, but it was in California that the young New Englander is believed to have first boarded.
It had arrived in San Francisco with 200 tons of lumber in July 1849, when the state was hit 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 luck. in the hills. and ravines of the Sierra Nevada.
Weeks later he returned to his ship empty-handed before welcoming Havens aboard as part of his new crew for the 14,000-mile voyage back to New England.
The mysterious tomb even had a foot stone.
Without gold to fill his hold, the captain stopped in Valparaíso, Chile, to pick up a shipment of copper ore valued at $12 million at current prices, along with 2,000 bales of cinchona bark used to make the remedy for malaria, quinine.
He also picked up four new crew members who decided to steal the cargo before the ship had left port.
Havens had remained on board after being promoted to second officer and was lucky to escape being poisoned when the ship’s cook targeted the officers’ food.
Captain Small and First Officer George Waite fell seriously ill after eating turtle soup a few days after leaving Chile.
The couple managed to recover, but two weeks later the captain was awakened in his cabin by the sound of musket shots and a cry of “murder” coming from Havens on the upper deck.
Rushing outside, he discovered that the ship’s armory had been taken by its mutinous crew and that Havens was clinging, mortally wounded, to a mooring post.
The cook and another sailor ordered him at gunpoint to return to his cabin and threatened to “blow his brains out” as they took control of the ship.
Local dentist and amateur historian Dr. Karl Stofko doubted there were any remains in the grave.
Ken Beatrice called in favors from former colleagues at the Bureau of Archeology to perform soil analysis on samples from the site and deploy ground-penetrating radar.
But the conspirators had overlooked the captain’s stash of machetes and Small grabbed a sword before escaping through his cabin window and charging at the ringleader.
First Officer George Waite joined him and the pair managed to overpower the mutineers and retake the ship.
Havens was dead, Waite was seriously injured, and most of the crew were in leg irons, leaving the captain to sail the ship almost alone back to Valparaiso, where he turned the conspirators over to the United States consul.
The United States Navy transported the detainees on 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 became evidence before the state and both were executed in July 1851.
But what had become of his murdered shipmate?
“A newspaper, I think it was the New York Herald in 1850, had an article saying that Asa was wrapped in a blanket and buried at sea off the coast of Chile,” Dr. Stofko said.
But did the captain really throw his loyal lieutenant overboard and continue 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 East Haddam Cemetery.
“His tombstone had a stone at the foot,” archaeologist Ken Beatrice told the Hartford Courant.
And the stone at the foot had his initials. And that sort of indicated that “Yes, there was a burial there.” “That got us talking.”
Three years ago, the city’s VFW post asked for volunteers to inspect East Haddam cemeteries for veterans’ graves that had fallen into disrepair.
The volunteers called themselves “Cemetery Soldiers” and began the painstaking work of documenting thousands of graves in the city’s 23 cemeteries.
They discovered more than 230 unmarked veteran graves dating back to the Revolutionary War, but were intrigued by the austere epitaph on the sailor’s tombstone.
“Asa was the talk,” Beatrice said.
“We always talked about him. And finally we did some research on him and that’s what sparked my interest.
Dr. Stofko was skeptical.
The amateur historian and professional dentist thought the matter was settled when he attempted to probe the grave with a long steel rod and discovered that the ground was rigid.
“That means the land was never excavated,” he said.
“Most graves can be explored quite easily with a probe rod because the earth has already been excavated.”
Troopers have documented thousands of graves in the town’s 23 cemeteries, uncovering veterans dating back to the Revolutionary War.
The young sailor’s tombstone has been restored and the mystery is finally solved.
But the Troopers were not satisfied. It was not uncommon for bodies to be preserved in a liquor barrel 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 anyone would put up a headstone if there was no one on the ground,” Stofko said.
Soldiers began restoring Havens’ tombstone and Beatrice called in favors from former colleagues in the Bureau of Archeology to have soil tests performed on samples from the site and to deploy ground-penetrating radar at the mysterious grave.
Radar suggested the ground had been disturbed at some point in the distant past, but Beatrice said soil analysis put the matter beyond doubt.
The soil beneath the surface showed a clear delineation between the dark top layer and the lighter sandy-colored subsoil, indicating that the two had never mixed as they would have if a grave had been dug.
“The mystery of Asa Havens has been solved,” Beatrice concluded.
‘They did not take him home to his family and buried him in North Plain Cemetery. Asa was delivered to the depths of the sea.’
“We were really hoping to find something,” he added. ‘We really wanted to find something.
“But it was fun.”