The Final Cruise
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A couple of months back, a reader wrote to inquire about the name of a paint hue he admired on the hull of a yacht we recently featured, adding that he wanted to refinish his own hull with it. His signature at the end of the letter read:
Capt. Brad White
New England Burials at Sea
Marshfield Hills, MA
“That’s interesting. Why don’t I hear more about this?” I wondered. We’re all aware of the tradition, but it’s still sort of off the radar, even for most ocean-going folks I know. How many of your loved ones have requested, or at least mentioned being buried at sea?
A burial at sea might seem like a somewhat antiquated ceremony—something reserved for military service members, with a flag-folding procedure to Taps and an umpteen-gun salute before a gauze-wrapped body is lowered into the brine. To some, it might sound like a fantastically romantic option for interment, but somehow unachievable or far-fetched for the bereaving.
I tried to let the thought go without probing much further or inquiring about morbidity with friends and family. Particularly because we were approaching the holiday season, and doom and gloom over egg nog and below the mistletoe doesn’t fly too well. But I was still thinking, regardless of the time of year, it’s a matter as serious and somber as matters get. My own longstanding wishes for my cremated remains came to mind. Personally, I’ve given strict instructions to a select few loved ones. Being a seafarer and an angler of the karmic order, I choose to be remitted to the sea not out of any matter of ego or commemoration or remembrance but out of settling the score. Sure, the sea has left me wet, cold, scraped, bruised, dirty and in any number of other worse-for-wear conditions, but I can’t deny that I’ve taken far more from the sea than she has taken from me. An untellable number of her creatures have made their grave by way of my rod and reel, and of course there’s also the innumerable bits of incidental and accidental litter, ranging from the combustion engine-related byproducts and spills, to the countless odds and ends of fishing tackle, which no serious angler can deny. Yes, at the very least, I owe the sea my earthly wares. After all, people take ash scatterings into their own hands in stranger places than the ocean. My own grandmother’s dying wish was to have her remains strewn over a certain department store. Had my mother and uncle not followed through (in commendable, clandestine fashion) they’d surely be haunted by her from the mantel.
I’ve thus had a very specific—and unique (so I thought) request to have my cremated remains ground up into a five-gallon bucket of chum and served up to a shiver of sharks, bluefish, or circumstances willing, maybe even a school of bluefin tuna. In whatever small, sooty way I can, I’d like to give something back to the species in the very waters I’ve plundered and disrupted most. Everyone from dear friends to my immediate family has been informed, even if disgusted and appalled of my wishes—even my mother who committed who knows how many transgressions in order to follow my grandmother’s final orders. We’ll see who my real friends and family are when the time comes. Be I above, below or askance, I’ll be watching.
You might think of a burial at sea as a do-it-yourself sort of task—and depending upon who’s undertaking the, well, undertaking, it may well be. Sea burial seems relatively straightforward: A boat, an urn, tin, bucket, sinkable coffin, chum bucket—any receptacle that will do. But what does burial at sea actually look like legally and practically? Rather than wondering, I reached out to Capt. Brad White, not just with the answer to his question—Awlgrip, Vivid Red, F7200, in case you’re wondering—but with a few questions of my own.
A lifelong fisherman with a twenty-year career in international business development, Capt. White was fishing with clients for bluefin off Massachusetts when someone first asked if he would perform a burial at sea. A flat “No,” was the initial answer. As it happens, he comes from a family of morticians and wasn’t exactly inclined to get back into the funerary business. “Way back when, my family used to be in the milk business in New England, and my great, great uncle Edwin said, ‘If we’re not pulling milk carts by Clydesdale horse—that’s how they did it back then—we should pull hearses.’ So as a kid, I used to work in the family funeral home and then some other funeral homes—and took an interest in the death care business until I saw a mother trying to pull her 17-year-old kid out of the casket in church one day. I said, ‘Okay, I’m out. That’s a little bit more than I want to handle.’”
Fast forward a few decades and Capt. White’s performing his first burial at sea: “I had been on the water my whole life and I got my captain’s license and I took somebody out for a tuna charter while I was working for the Sharper Image. And he said, ‘Hey, can you scatter my uncle’s cremated remains?’ I said, ‘Sure.’
Today, White owns and runs New England Burials at Sea, the most in-demand burial-at-sea service in the United States. With some 2,400 captains trained as funeral directors at the ready to hold services for no less than 28 religions up and down the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards, and across the Gulf of Mexico. He has, in short, expanded way beyond New England.
First off, wherever—and whenever—you fall philosophically, religiously and literally, White said that it’s worth knowing that here in the U.S. of A., you are perfectly within your rights, ability and budget to make your final resting place the high seas—or even a Great Lake. But be you in full form (refrigerated or embalmed), or in ashes, and by plane or boat, there are a number of matters to consider, and a handful of laws by which to abide. But otherwise, the sea is, in death as in life, your oyster, and if you so choose, your locker.
So how does burial at sea work within the legal confines of the United States government? What can and can’t we do, and why hire a captain and crew to perform the service when you might just as soon use your uncle’s rancid, leaky old fishing boat to do the deed? The short of it is that you can certainly do it yourself with means as modest as a Folger’s coffee can and a vessel seaworthy enough to get you three nautical miles offshore. Mine, if I have it my way, will almost surely run along those lines. Still, burial at sea can be a little more complex and there might be a little red tape to navigate.
Firstly, any military veterans should know that the military will conduct at-sea burials free of charge in honor of their service, with the caveat that, according to Capt. White, wait lists can be months long, and many families often choose to make private arrangements.
The easiest way to have your remains set out at sea is to have your ashes scattered, and hiring a fully insured and licensed outfit such as Capt. White’s starts within the realm of a few thousand dollars for a small gathering. Of course, if you or a trusted acquaintance has a seaworthy vessel, you can just as soon do it yourself, so long as you or your loved ones don’t stand too much on formality. A professional piece of advice from Capt. White to the executors of any such wishes: Watch the wind (and release ashes accordingly), and take GPS coordinates and/or landmarks so the final resting place is known. Legally, you’re also required to file for a permit with the Environmental Protection Agency at least 30 days in advance and report the activity once complete, assuring that no inorganic matter was disposed of in the process, as scattering ashes at sea is considered to be under the (very) wide umbrella term of “dumping.”
Having your ashes scattered by plane is another option, albeit a predictably more expensive one. And family and loved ones (should they be mutually exclusive) will likely have to remain ashore or aboard a vessel for the ceremony, as most planes available for burial services are small.
A full-body burial is where things start to get a little complicated. First off, your options will depend upon whether or not you plan a shore-based service that includes anyone but family, in which case remains must be embalmed for (legal) health-safety reasons. Capt. White will perform the ceremony in any case, but prefers not to deposit toxins (i.e., embalming fluid) into the ocean. Being inorganic, the legality surrounding the burial of embalmed remains is gray at best. On that note, consider the sea life if you will, per Capt. White, “It is not necessarily approved to embalm a body before it goes in the ocean, but we all love the ocean. We all want to keep it clean. So why put toxins in it?”
In the case of a full-body burial at sea, the remains must bear an identification tag just in case, say, a fishing trawler happens to grab hold of them. The coffin or container must have 40 cubic inches of holes in it to ensure that it sinks, but also “to let air and gas out and sea life escape and sea life in,” allowing for decomposition.
Regulations in the U.S. also state that full human remains may be dropped in no less than 600-foot deep water, which, along our coastlines could mean anywhere from six to 600 miles offshore—not necessarily a quick and easy return trip, especially for less nautically-inclined mourners. That also brings up fuel costs and overall expenses if you’re hiring a service (think accommodations and several catered meals).
Another requisite is weight: 150 pounds of sinking matter must also be affixed. “Now,” Capt. White told me, “there are people that try to do this on their own; they might use bags of cement, they might use chain. We don’t do any of that because it’s ugly.”
According to White, nearly 80 percent of his services are ash scatterings, but, covering such sprawling cultural and geographical ranges, he has, as you might imagine, come across his fair share of odd requests, too. Mine, with the ashes in the chum? Old hat, it turns out. Back to the drawing board for me. “I’ve got one really good one that comes to mind,” he told me. “A lot of people want to do special things that are very simple, like writing messages on shells and throwing ‘em out to sea. In one case, a dad was a model builder and he built a sailboat—and we would like to do a Viking burial.”
Now a “proper” fiery Viking funeral is more or less prohibited out of U.S. ports. Per a clause in EPA regulations, any vessel carrying human remains out to sea must return intact as such—a vessel, that is. Otherwise, to perform a true Viking funeral, in which the dearly departed is cast out to sea aboard a vessel set to immolate, you’ll need to sail 200 nautical miles offshore into international waters and possibly not make landfall in the U.S. afterward.
Capt. White came up with a better solution: “Let’s see … we’d like to put his ashes in the sailboat, light it on fire. Well, fire on a boat’s not good. But we figured out a way where we lay the model boat with hay after you put the cremated remains in, put a lemon and a lime so you don’t get scurvy at sea. And we torch it with a layer of some diesel fluid, and it burns, burns, burns, burns, and then gently turns over and dispels the ashes. So that’s a fairly common request: Viking burials at sea with ashes.”
There’s another, perhaps simpler option too, Florida-based charity Eternal Reefs will mix your ashy remains with an eco-safe concrete and drop you to the seafloor as part of a reef ball. These fish habitats resemble giant concrete whiffle balls, and they create a perfect safe haven for fish, and a surface for coral to grow. It’s a unique way to support new life in the afterlife. Coordinates of the reef balls are given to friends and family so they can visit—and maybe even fish—their relative’s grave site.
Ultimately, White says, wherever, however and with whomever you choose to have your remains take their final plunge, planning well in advance can prevent a whole mess of complications. White’s advice is this: Make and pay for the arrangements yourself if the remains in question are yours. Surviving loved ones have fought and severed ties over less, and your ahead-of-time planning can avail them of that rocky road. “And if there’s any one piece of advice I’d give any family that’s looking around is whatever your wishes are—and we have a wish planner we can send folks—make sure it’s notarized because if it’s not notarized for free at your local bank, it’s not worth the paper it’s written on.”
Administration aside, there’s a certain sanctity, a sort of communing with nature, fresh air and the high seas, that lifts spirits in a way that a stale funeral parlor may not. “Every time I see the ashes go to sea, we realize how infinitesimal we are as humans to the whole planet,” waxes Capt. White.
I ask if he plans to be buried at sea. “I’ll tell you,” he says. “I took my best friend’s body out to sea off of Cape Cod. We were 25 miles northeast of Cape Cod in a place called Wildcat Knoll, which he loved to fish at. And we were going out and all of a sudden I saw a shark come out of the water and take a bird, and I’m on the water every day, and I’ve never seen that before. I said, wow, that’s pretty cool. Then I looked down to the odometer and saw that we were at 705 feet of water. I said, here, we’re here at the place. So we stopped. We had the beautiful at-sea tribute event, and then as soon as his body went overboard, about 75 Atlantic white-sided dolphins came out of the water right next to us with eyes as big as tennis balls looking at me. And I had an epiphany. It was like, we’ve got him now, we’ll take care of him. And we didn’t have a dry eye in the house. So when I look at that and I see the wildlife every day, it never gets old and it’s really special. And so that’s a long answer to your question: absolutely.”
