The Sea Lady

Very few people make plans for their own funerals despite most of them thinking it would be a good idea, according to recently published research. My grandmother pre-paid her funeral as a matter of course. She knew what she’d be getting, that it would be paid for and that it would be done according to her wishes. Today that’s not the fashion although curiously there is now a massive consumer market and a baffling array of choices not available in her day. Some people do want to choose for themselves rather than leaving a myriad decisions about cremation, burial, rockets, urns, natural burial grounds, church, chipboard, wood and the rest to the bereaved.

Novelist Margaret Drabble is thinking ahead. She has always wanted to be cremated when the time comes. Now she has learnt about the high carbon emissions from burning corpse and coffin; and that cremation is also responsible for 16% of the UK’s mercury pollution from the fillings in our teeth. She is alarmed. “I’ve got lots of fillings. I don’t want to be a major polluter!” But the burial alternative doesn’t appeal to her much either. “I don’t like the idea of being underground. What I’d really like is to be buried at sea. But I don’t suppose it’s allowed.”

Like Drabble, I too rather assumed that burial at sea was banned, unless you were a sailor. In fact, sailors aren’t buried at sea. A Royal Navy ship leaving Portsmouth will sometimes stop for a 10 minute ceremony led by a chaplain before scattering the ashes of an old seafarer, but that’s the limit. My grandfather was a sailor with the Royal Navy and when he died in Australia, the navy there gave him a send-off at sea. His ashes were scattered while the Last Post was played. He would have been proud. Most of us are unlikely to be honoured by a trumpeter and a naval salute.

Sea scattering is possible for civilians too. “It’s very popular with residents of Weymouth” says Helen Allen from the local Co-operative funeral directors. RNLI volunteers take ashes out to sea, perform a short service and then tip the ashes overboard. The families wait in the harbour and watch as the lifeboat circles the spot twice before returning. Alternatively, families can stand on terra firma and tip the ashes into the water themselves. The key thing advises Allen, is to do it soon after the funeral service. “We had a lady who couldn’t decide what to do with the ashes for 7 months. In the end the RNLI took them out to sea for her but she got upset all over again. Scattering gives closure after the funeral service.”

There’s no license required ( so long as you don’t inter the ashes in an urn) so there’s nothing to stop you having a swimming party with the ashes or scattering them to the 4 winds and the waves from a beach or boat of your choice. Tam Charles-Davis from the Brittania Shipping Company for Burial at Sea has one word of warning. “Make sure you know which way the wind is blowing! It sounds flippant but you don’t want to end up with a face full of ash.” Drabble, however, remains unmoved. She wants neither a swimming party, an outstretched arm scattering from the shore or a yacht in the bay. She wants the real thing. Body overboard, and no cremation pollution.

It turns out, if she really, really wants it, she can have it. There are only about 16-18 burials at sea each year and they are strictly regulated. There are only 2 designated spots for corpses at sea off the English coast. One is near Newhaven and the other is the Needles, off the Isle of Wight. Anyone organizing a sea burial needs a license from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) (or the Scottish or Welsh Assembly). The terms of the license require a medical certificate to prove that the body has no fever or infection. The body may not be embalmed (the embalming process slows down decomposition). The coroner needs to be informed as a body is being removed from England. A sea fishery inspector is appointed to check the coffin to make sure it meets the regulations.

The coffin itself has to be made of solid softwood to be biodegradable. It has to be butt-jointed and strengthened with steel brackets to ensure it can take the stress of being dropped into the water. The body has to be tagged with its registration number and the telephone number of the licensee. The body can be lightly clad “commensurate with modesty” in biodegradable materials. The coffin has to have a couple of dozen holes drilled in it and also be weighted with 200kg steel, iron or concrete. The body also has to be weighted. Chains weighing 10% more than the body weight, wrapped around the body are recommended. All these demands are of course to stop rotting corpses from turning up on beaches or getting picked up in fishing nets by hapless trawlermen.

It does happen. That’s the objection of the coroner for the Isle of Wight. 6 bodies or body parts were washed ashore on the Isle of Wight over 4 years from the nearby marine burial site. In 2005 the coroner’s office submitted recommendations to Defra for changes in sea burial practice including possibly stopping burials at sea altogether. “It’s usually dog walkers on the beach who find the body parts” says coroner’s officer Richard Leedham. “It’s distressing for them. And it’s distressing for families with missing persons who think the body might be their loved one.” There is also a financial implication. It costs around £8000 to identify remains, which has to be paid by the council.

The coroner is advocating taking DNA samples from the body prior to burial and storing them on the missing persons’ database, to ease identification if body parts are later washed up. He believes this would cost about £300. It would be paid as part of the burial license, which is currently free. Defra are looking into the suggestion. They point out that very few bodies actually wash up onto the shore. However in view of the risks, the licensing authority normally recommends that, rather than burial of the body at sea, consideration should be given to the scattering at sea of cremation ashes.

Some of those who are not persuaded by the ashes option and want a sea burial for themselves, sign up to a register held by The Brittania Shipping Company. One man who signed up in 1988 has just rung in to update his address. His funeral, at today’s prices will cost from £4,150 for the marine coffin and full maritime interment. “You’re just as likely to get someone from Birmingham wanting a sea burial as someone who has a sea connection” says Tam Charles-Davis. “Usually people prefer a funeral service first at their local church then close family only go on board for the interment. Elderly people in particular don’t want to go out to sea.” Ceremonies are tailor-made but Elgar’s Nimrod is a common choice of music to accompany on board proceedings.

Neither the legalities nor the risk of coming up again from Davy Jones’s locker have yet put Margaret Drabble off. She thinks she might well be willing to order another hundred kilos of weights to keep her under. She considers whether there might not be a good business opportunity in it. “Fishing boats could take bodies out on ice, tip them out, catch their fish and return with the fish on ice. No need to travel one way empty!” Drabble’s latest book is called “The Sea Lady” and is suffused with her fascination for the sea. Her interest in rolling with the waves, now she knows she really can, is keener, though she would like to know whether this really is an ecologically satisfactory solution. Would her bodily remains contribute to the marine food chain? She would like to think so. She needs an answer to this before she commits herself to the waves. It may be woman overboard, but not for a long while yet.