Burial at Sea

The broad definition of burial at sea encompasses deposition of the corpse in all bodies of water, including not only the sea but also rivers, lakes, and even small ponds. Water burial has been employed by numerous cultures over time, sometimes as a deliberate choice for the disposal of the dead and other times purely out of necessity. Although the rituals employed in burying a body in the water often mimic those on land, there are important differences due to the nature of the aquatic environment. This entry examines the need for proper burial rites at sea, discusses the wide divergence in crosscultural attitudes toward water inhumation, explores the burial at sea service as a ritual of separation, and notes modern trends in disposing of bodies at sea.

The Need for Proper Burial

Despite the fact that many societies have employed water burial throughout history, cross-cultural comparison indicates that humans are wary of burial at sea unless the proper rites can be performed. Among the Tikopia of the South Pacific, for example, Firth recorded the belief that those who were lost at sea—and thus did not receive a proper funeral—would return to haunt their families, causing sickness or even death. In Tikopia society, religious specialists had the crucial job of contacting lost spirits to find out what had happened to them and where their bodies rested. Armed with this knowledge, the family could then perform a funeral and lay the spirit to rest. This belief is strikingly similar to Western mariners from the Age of Sail, whose stories and songs are replete with the spirits of those who died at sea. Although these ghosts, unlike those of the Tikopia, sometimes aided vessels instead of causing harm, mariners always feared them. The spirits of those buried in the water, like those who die unnatural or untimely deaths on land, are widely held to return unless proper burial rites are performed.

Attitudes toward Water Burial

Cross-culturally, attitudes toward water inhumation vary from acceptable to undesirable. Some cultures view water as the proper place for the dead, whereas others see it only as a place of last resort or as the place to dispose of criminals or other social outcasts. The former attitude is probably best exemplified by the Hindu belief that the river Ganges is a sacred place that will take the dead to heaven. At the other end of the spectrum lies the idea of water as a convenient place for the elimination of unwanted items. Throughout history, humans have viewed water as a place to dispose of things that are no longer wanted or needed, including corpses. Lindenlauf's research, for example, highlights the similarity between the attitude of the ancient Greeks and modern garbage disposal practices. In both cases, water is seen as a “place of no return” in which unwanted things could be safely discarded.

In keeping with the idea of water as a place for the disposal of refuse, many societies have viewed the sea as the proper place to deposit the bodies of [Page 124]those who are tainted in some way. The Andaman Islanders, for example, were known to throw the bodies of strangers or enemies into the sea with no burial rites whatsoever. Krause observed that the Tlingit peoples of Alaska did the same with slaves. In both of these cases, disposing of humans in this manner was not thought to generate restless spirits in the way described earlier. This seems to be because strangers, enemies, and slaves were not accorded status as members of the group. They were, in essence, not human. The “bog bodies,” of prehistoric northern Europe, which exhibit signs of trauma and were often bound, may also be the bodies of criminals, enemies, or slaves disposed of in the water in a manner comparable to that practiced by the Andaman Islanders and Tlingit.

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