A Vampire foundling. A merciful priest. A child abandoned by his own.
The H.M.S. Granville left the English port of Bristol on June 16, 1775 heading to the American colony of New York. It was a merchant cargo ship under the stern hand of Master Abraham Cleeve. It’s ship’s Log was recently found in a dilapidated trunk of old documents in a dirt-floor corner area of a basement in Boxwood Hall, a National Historical site on East Jersey Street in Elizabeth, New Jersey. “Elizabethtowne” was a bustling maritime port city in the American Colonial period and sustained much of “Northern Jersey” through trade and smuggling. It was primarily a “secondary” (translated: transshipment ) destination for British vessels trading with loyalist merchants who sought to steer clear of increasingly volatile American colonial ports – like Boston. The Log of the H.M.S. Granville can be found today on display at Boxwood Hall, itself an enduring example of colonial architecture. Painted barn-red, it has been visited by perhaps every serious Colonial era scholar in the United States since its recognition as a United States National Historical site.
Ship’s Master Abraham Cleeve maintained elaborately detailed and hand-written notes in his Log recording facts about his cargo, passengers and sea-passage events. Cargo details would have been necessary for his Lloyd’s of London “Underwriters” who “vouchsafed” – or insured – his voyages. Particulars of crew accidents, storms and deaths were laboriously itemized to assure his merchant clientelle that Captain Cleeve had their best interests at heart and was worthy of their future business. He had a reputation for honesty and probity – and was a proud Presbyterian.
The Granville Log relates that Captain Cleeve set sail from Bristol, England with thirteen passengers for the Colonies and a significant tonnage of fabics, utensils, machine tools, dyes, chemical tinctures, Carribean indigo, Indian spices, nails and Madeira wine. Among his passengers was one Beatka Kosinski, “maidservant” to Doctor Alders Grootenshilf and his wife, Aidena Grootenshilf. They were all traveling to America to start a new life there. Grootenshilf was a Medical doctor of renown in his native Holland, who was most recently an attending physician to the Imperial Court of Catherine the Great in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Actually, some uncomfortable attention he’d received in Europe for his unorthodox “surgical techniques” no doubt motivated Dr. Alders Grootenshilf to board the H.M.S. Granville for America. In contemporary parlance, the good Doctor was – simply stated – an Abortionist. Unfortunately, on this journey the Grootenshilf’s leisure was burdened by their maidservant Beatka – she was (in the words of Captain Cleeve in his Log) “morbidly obese, sweating and wearing a cadaverous pallor, heaving breath and dragging hideously swollen feet…..her odour was most foetid……..only with the help of crewmen did she reach her quarters below deck. The reek of her stench permeates our vessel……” Once safely ensconced in her damp and cramped room, Beatka was seen by no one until weeks after their departure from Bristol Port. In fact, both Grootenshilfs spent most of their time below deck tending to their ailing domestic servant.
Captain Cleeve documents a “severe storm with much lightening and gales for a fortnight” that besieged his ship about three hundred nautical miles off Long Island “causing much damage to our sails and rigging and sickness thru our crew”. A boatswain mate died “after suffering agonies from the bloody dysenteries and pustulent, distended boweles” and was buried at sea. Grootenshilf’s maidservant Beatka Kosinski also didn’t survive the journey. The ship’s Log tells us that she “died from relentless hemorrhages and organ eruptions, passing out her entrails by bucket-fulles despite vigorous efforts bye Dr. Grootenshilf to save her. Her corpse was like an empty sack, seemingly emptied of viscera, that emitted a miasma most foul”.
Beatka Kosinski was buried at sea. By the time the H.M.S. Granville docked in Manhattan all that remained of her life was a large, expensive trunk with her name tag wired to it that was to be delivered to their next port of call: Elizabethtowne, New Jersey. Curously, Doctor and Lady Grootenshilf took possession of this trunk upon their arrival in New York and returned it to the ship two weeks later when Captain Cleeve left Manhattan for Elizabethtowne in New Jersey Colony. The trunk was entirely clad in hand-fitted brown leather with numerous brass-grommeted round vent perforations along its sides and a masterfully-tooled Lion’s face centered on it’s top lid. The lion’s open mouth contained three elaborate vent holes. Brass corner hardware, hinges and an imposing keyed latch gleamed against its top-quality leather exterior. It was an obviously regal, artisan-crafted container – an object d’art highly unlikely to be commissioned and paid for by a lowly maidservant. But Captain Cleeve took little further note of the luggage – the rich bounties of the Carribean beckoned and he was anxious to make way. He stood to make handsome profits upon his return to England if all went as planned. It would not.
The trunk – this time absent its key and presumeably locked – was duly re-loaded onto the H.M.S. Granville when it departed for Elizabethtowne – and off-loaded two days later at the wharfs in “Elizabethtowne Porte”. Captain Cleeve personally relinquished possession of the container to two swarthy-looking teamsters who were waiting to collect it. One signed for the cargo on Cleeve’s “Receipts Delivered” roster as “Isolde Dampf”. Cleeve was surprised the ruffian could sign his name – he expected an “X”. The Captain watched their wagon pull away, weaving its way up First Street towards Broad.
The trunk didn’t have far to go. “Isolde Dampf” and his comrade off-loaded the trunk at Saint Matthew’s Catholic Mission House on Bayway Avenue. They made certain that a particular Jesuit Priest, Father Jean-Francois Moulin, took possession of the object and paid them the remainder of their – handsome – fee in Spanish silver pieces. No paperwork was executed. Isolde Dampf and his friend left quickly and they would be blissfully drunk within the hour. In fact – with the amount of silver they received, they’d be drunk for days.
Father Moulin asked a young novitiate, Brother Amsher, to help him carry the trunk to his Priests quarters – and then dispatched him to ride on horseback to “up the Elizabethtowne Pike” to the farm of Friedrich and Jacqueline Kneiphauser in “Connecticut Farms, Springfield Towne” to deliver a sealed letter marked “Urgent”. Father Moulin then asked a Nun, Sister Harriet, to bring to his room a bowl of freshly-slaughtered chopped beef.
Father Moulin reached into his cassock pocket and produced a brass key. He carefully unlocked and opened the trunk lid, praying as he did so. There, wrapped in white – but soiled – satin sheets of bedding was an pathetically emaciated baby boy. His impossibly small head was buried into a lace-fringed satin pillow embroidered with the words “Mon Bebe, Alaric”. His eyes were dark, almost black. His pale skin was nearly as translucent as alabaster. Amazingly, the infant’s gumbs showed signs of teeth breaking through. He seemed lethargic but aggitated and hungry. The Priest carefully wrapped and squeezed the chopped meat in clean cheese cloth, draining the blood into a small bottle that he capped with a wooden spout used to feed baby farm animals. This he offered to the small child.
The baby greedily sucked at the red fluid and started to kick and writhe. Minute by minute he rallied. Soon he showed signs of strength.
“Yes” said Father Moulin to himself. “He will live…..he is a miracle….he….will….live. The rumors are true, God help us. Dear Jesus, what have they done?”
Copyright, 2023 Jon Croft
Photo Credit to Scene from F.W. Murnau’s
1922 movie, Nosferatu.
