SIXTY years after his death, the grave of a Merchant Navy seaman has been tracked down and a Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstone put on it.

Nineteen-year-old Havelock George Hipwell, the brother of retired nurse Patricia Fenton from Newland and uncle of Julie Allsopp, landlady of Link Top's Vaults, was killed after his ship was torpedoed off Newfoundland, Canada, during the Second World War. His family were not given details of the whereabouts of his burial.

Earlier that year, 1942, Havelock's father Frederick, aged 42, had also been killed while on a flying mission over Germany.

Although his family believed he was ground-based, in May 1942 he was the flight engineer aboard a 78 Squadron Halifax bomber which was lost whilst bombing Hamburg.

Enlisting the help of Dickie Valentine, the Worcester-based vice-chairman of the Merchant Navy Association, Mrs Allsopp began the search for more details about the deaths in 2000.

Although the family did have a 1942 death certificate for Havelock, his diary and several photographs of his funeral, she was keen to find out more.

An initial search by MN historian Peter Sharpe found that because Merchant Navy deaths were not classified as being 'due to war causes', enquiries to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission proved fruitless.

The eldest child of five, Havelock signed up with the Merchant Navy in 1939, at the same time as the family moved away from a poverty-stricken life in Ireland to England and he had graduated as a boarder from a marine school.

After his first ship, the SS Beatus, was torpedoed, Havelock joined the SS Campus on November 11, 1940 and his 1942 diary charts the ship's journey from London to Newcastle and then across the North Atlantic.

On leaving Newfoundland, that ship was attacked and the critically burned apprentice was operated on after being admitted with burns to a Merchant Navy hospital. He died the following morning.

Patricia, remembers Havelock as being a popular, handsome blonde who would return for home visits with gifts of perfume and trinkets.

She said he had made friends in Newfoundland, one of whom had collected his cap after his funeral and a journalist visiting his ship had written of him as a cheerful pianist entertaining colleagues.

Patricia said: "He was very much loved. My mother lost, all in the same year, her younger brother, her husband and her eldest son. She was never the same again."

In being asked to write an epitaph for Havelock's new headstone Patricia said: "I composed something for my mother. She wore his Merchant Navy badge until her death. This means a lot."

She also said she hoped soon to make the pilgrimage to Havelock's grave in Newfound-land and on Sunday will wear his medals to lay a wreath during a remembrance service at Tewkesbury Abbey.