Forever at sea

The challenge of setting up sea burials

By Usa Williams

IN the Cook Islands, when it comes to burial, it seems the wishes of the living rather than the final wishes of the dying take precedence.

Although sea burials are legal in these islands, final wishes of local residents who planned to be buried at sea have never been fulfilled. Historically, burial at sea was long seen as the domain of seafarers who died on the journey, in an age without refrigeration or embalming fluid.

Nowadays, it’s the final farewell of choice

for a growing number of those who don’t want the conventional earthbound grave.

For about a dozen people in the Davey Jones’ Locker club, it is a challenge to set a precedent by being the first to be buried at sea. Club member Don Silk says it is made up of people who are comfortable at sea and with the idea of being consigned to its depths. The biggest problem with a sea burial is not in offending the sensibilities of the living, but how to leave the living behind. It’s very important to sort out the family reaction to sea burial before the fact, says Silk. “For those of us who want to be buried at sea the last thing we want is our family squabbling over possession of the body. We make it very clear to our members that you must have it in your will, prefer ably giving us a copy of your will or a cod icil (an extra clause added afterwards).”

The written bits guarantee agreement from the family to the Davey Jones Locker commitment, and ensure “there’s no muck ing around when the time comes,” says Silk. Most of the members of Davey Jones’

Locker know the main problem that might arise. They are married to Cook Islanders, resident in a country where the dead are still part of the homestead, a decorated or shaded cement square in the front or back garden. Silk says the group has no wish to get into fights over the issue.

“As a group we’re happy to bury each other if the person asking wants to be buried at sea, but we’re not out as a group encouraging it as a habit. We’re not out proselytising, saying ‘we think you should be buried at sea’... it’s a very personal thing amongst a few of us friends.”

The only motive for going public is to let others out there know that the opportu nity is there, he says. Without Davey Jones’s Locker, there is no choice but to be buried on land because there is no other organisation able to carry out those last wishes. In New Zealand, most burials at sea are done after cremation, After a ser

vice which is no different from that for land burials, the body is taken to the wharf, loaded onto a vessel and taken to sea. Only a few close relatives and perhaps a Chaplain will be on board to witness the burial, ‘‘which can be a very dignified cer emony in itself,” says Silk.

The ceremony is common practice in some countries, including our Pacific neighbours (American) Samoa and Fiji, he says. In the Pacific identifying a specific site for sea burials is not as big an issue as it is for countries such as New Zealand, where the continental shelf means vessels have travel to .many miles to find deep water. “In the islands here you’ve only got to go a mile offshore and you’re no longer in soundings, where the water is thousands of feet deep,” says Silk, “so there’s no point in nominating a particular place, as long as it is offshore and not in soundings”.

For the Davey Jones group, questions like how the ceremony will be kept digni fied and weighting the body with chain wrapped round the shroud have been dis cussed and planned for the last three years, ever since Don Silk raised the question out loud and was taken aback by the big response. “I’m surprised how many of my friends that I see everyday are quite keen on the idea,” he says, “there must be many other people who have never heard of this, but maybe think it’s a good idea.”

Most of those who do support the notion of sea burial are men, says Silk.

“Some wives are not keen but this is something to sort out beforehand. It’s a very personal thing, but a lot of people think after you die the spirit is gone and the body is a heap of flesh and bones...just something to be got rid of, in a ceremonial, nice way of course.” So now that the assumptions on ‘buried’ meaning ‘buried in earth’ have been shifted offshore, has the man who founded Davey Jones’ Locker decided on any particular spot? Silk is com fortable in his reply, saying “Anywhere, just outside the harbour...a mile or so out. I won’t be there to mark the spot”. ■