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Abstract
Maritime mortality rates were declining on passenger ships in the nineteenth century, but witnessing a death and funeral during an ocean voyage nevertheless remained a common enough experience. The article explores reactions to ocean funerals on nineteenth-century British and Irish emigrant ships and also more broadly. While shock and distress inevitably figured large, other responses, including acceptance, enthusiasm and even degrees of voyeurism, were not unusual. Moreover, in common with Victorian audiences more generally, at least some emigrants had an appetite for the sensation and spectacle of the ceremony. Broader cultural interest in the ocean funeral meant that it featured in a wide range of forms including popular journalism, narrative accounts of journeys and didactic literature. Emigrants consequently did not embark as blank slates but carried with them a well-established and familiar repertoire of ideas and images about the ocean funeral. Religious beliefs about the resurrection of the soul were likewise a source of consolation. Others found comfort by depicting the ocean as a spiritual site – likening the sea to heaven, for instance – or in the belief that an ocean burial was more natural, simple and therefore meaningful than a funeral on land. The growing significance of the sea in Victorian culture also played an important role in helping contemporaries make sense of, and come to terms with, an ocean funeral. Religious ideas about life as a spiritual journey enabled many Victorian men and women to look to the ocean as a way of thinking through bigger questions about life and death.
Notes
According to Marjory Harper, 22.6 million individuals left the British Isles between 1815 and 1914. See Harper, ‘British migration and the peopling of the empire’, 75. On maritime mortality see, for example, Haines and Shlomowitz, ‘Explaining the modern mortality decline’ and Klein et al., ‘Transoceanic mortality’.
On sailors, see Fury, Tides in the affairs of men and Rediker, Between the devil and the deep blue sea, esp. 193–8. On fishing and other maritime communities, see Pollard, ‘The drowned and the saved’ and Tarlow, Bereavement and commemoration.
On Britain see, for example, Houlbrooke, Death, religion and the family in England; Jalland, Death in the Victorian family; Tarlow, Bereavement and commemoration; and Strange, Death, grief and poverty in Britain. Work on the colonies includes Arnold, ‘Deathscapes’; Jalland, Australian ways of death; and Mytum, ‘Death and remembrance in the colonial context’.
Haines, Life and death in the age of sail and Jalland, Australian ways of death. Other notable exceptions include Blum, The view from the masthead, 159–92 and Stewart ‘Burials at sea’.
The main change that seems to have occurred over time was that faster vessels and the presence of shipboard morgues provoked more debate among passengers as to whether an ocean funeral might in some instances be avoided. Related to this, some individuals began to take shipping companies and captains to court for refusing to keep the body of their family member until they made land. For an example, see ‘Burial at sea’, Argus (Melbourne), 24 June 1915.
On the impact of the First World War on cultures of mourning more broadly see, for example, Jalland, Australian ways of death, 304–28; Jalland, Death in war and peace; and Tarlow, ‘An archaeology of remembering’.
‘Man overboard’, The Pioneer: a newspaper published on board the SS Queen of the Thames during her first trip to Melbourne (Melbourne, 1871), 32.
On evangelicalism, see Jalland, Death in the Victorian family, esp. chap. 1.
Mytum, Mortuary monuments and burial grounds, 14.
ibid., 14.
Tarlow, ‘Landscapes of memory’, 218, 222, 233–4.
ibid., 227–8. See also Laqueur, ‘Cemeteries, religion and the culture of capitalism’.
Tarlow, ‘Landscapes of memory’, 231, 233.
Bradley, ‘Burial custom formerly observed in the naval service’, 68 (emphasis in original).
For an example of a fellow passenger reading the Hebrew burial service over the body of a Jewish woman, see ‘Burial at sea’, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 July 1896.
On emigrant fears about dying and being buried at sea see, for example, Jalland, Australian ways of death, esp. 15–17.
Marshall, Afloat on the Pacific, 54.
‘The burial at sea’, Metropolitan Magazine, 50, Nov. 1847, 237.
An Old Sailor, ‘Emigrants at sea’, The Leisure Hour, 1 Dec. 1867, 822.
‘Affecting incident’, The Royal Gazette and Newfoundland Advertiser, 27 May 1834.
‘Burial at sea’, Te Aroha News (Waikato, New Zealand), 8 Jan. 1887.
ibid.
‘Death and burial at sea’, Hobart Mercury, 3 May 1883.
For a case where a man was buried at sea partly because the captain wanted to ‘save the deceased a pauper's funeral’, see ‘Burials at sea’, Marlborough Express, 10 May 1883.
On sailors' preferences, see Fury, Tides in the affairs of men, 91.
‘Sea burial without false sorrow’, The Times, 26 July 1920. Today burials at sea are regarded by some as a green option and have to an extent become more popular; see ‘No fishing: sea provides a new wave in green funerals’, Sunday Times, 14 Nov. 2008. Sea burials in the United Kingdom are tightly regulated by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and also by laws regarding the removal and disposal of bodies. For details, see Marine Management Organisation. ‘Burials at sea’, available online: http://marinemanagement.org.uk/works/controls/burial.htm
The Star (Canterbury, New Zealand), 20 Aug. 1874. For similar debates, see Hobart Mercury, 11 Oct. 1875.
Haines, Life and death in the age of sail, 87, 159.
My thanks to one of the anonymous reviewers for suggesting the phrase ‘compassion fatigue’ here.
Jalland, Australian ways of death, esp. 17–32.
As Rediker notes, ‘lingering grief, which would have turned some voyages into an endless rite of mourning, could hardly have been tolerated’ among sailors in the working environment and closed community of the ship. Rediker, Between the devil and the deep blue sea, 196.
Blindloss, In the Niger country, 330.
Whyte, The ocean plague, 51.
Edward Dash, ‘Journal of a voyage by the ship Ann Dashwood from Liverpool to Australia’, 11 Sep. 1853, Australian National Maritime Museum, MS 151359.
William Perkins, ‘Diary on board the Clontarf, 1859–60’, Otago Settlers' Museum, M47.
Milligan, The jungle folk of Africa, 352.
Rediker, Between the devil and the deep blue sea, 196.
For examples, see ‘Life in India: a soldier's diary’, Preston Guardian, 20 Feb. 1869.
ibid.
Dash, ‘Journal’, 12, 22 and 25 July 1853.
William Richards, ‘Journal of a voyage from Plymouth to Sydney in the Duchess of Argyll, 1882–3’, State Library of New South Wales [SLNSW] MSS 7621, 127–8.
ibid., 81–3.
Arthur Wilcox Manning, ‘Journal of a voyage from Plymouth to Sydney on the Earl Grey, 1839–40’, SLNSW MSS 7390, front matter.
ibid., 18–19 Nov. 1839.
ibid., 18 Nov. 1839 (emphasis in original).
ibid., 22–3 Dec. 1839.
Haines provides numerous moving examples in Life and death, 11–12, 48, 154–5. See also Harper, ‘Pains, perils and pastimes’, 166.
Booth, Five years in New Zealand, 25–6.
Scoresby, Journal of a voyage to Australia, 311.
For a similar case, see ‘Pathetic incident in mid-ocean’, Lancaster Gazette, 6 Aug. 1887.
Hood, Australia and the East, 65–6. Passengers also sometimes raised funds as a memorial and support for the kin of dead sailors. For examples, see The City of Melbourne Gazette published on board the City of Melbourne ship (Melbourne, 1864), 30 Jan., 20 Feb., 12 Mar. 1864.
Anon., Book of shipwrecks, 92–3.
‘A funeral at sea’, Marco Polo Chronicle, 29 July 1854 (emphasis added).
‘Pathetic incident’.
Thus, one diarist recorded that ‘from the novelty of the sight, nearly all the passengers were on Deck’ to see the body of a girl ‘put over the vessel's side’. Thomas Lyle, ‘Notes of a voyage from London to Australia in the ship Nepaul’, 20 July 1852, Internet Family History Association of Australia, available online at: http://www.historyaustralia.org.au/ifhaa/bios/tlyle.htm. Recalling a burial at sea that he had witnessed in his childhood, James Hedderwick emphasised both shock and spectacle, remembering: ‘That I might see the body drown/They lifted me and I could note/The yellow blankets shimmering down/Uncertain if to sink or float’ in ‘A funeral at sea’, Manchester Times, 25 June 1864.
Thorburn, Men and manners in Britain, 17.
Jalland, Australian ways of death, 48.
‘The burial at sea’, Ladies' Cabinet, 1 Mar. 1840, 85.
A traveller upon the ocean, ‘The ocean compared to heaven’, The Pioneer, 45–6 (emphasis in original).
Thorburn, Men and manners, 18–19 (emphasis in original). For a similar description, see ‘Funeral at sea’, Cleave's Penny Gazette, 21 July 1838. Some passengers were even able to draw spiritual meaning and succour from bad weather: Unidentified male passenger, ‘Diary of a voyage, 1839–40’, SLNSW A310, 8 Dec. 1839.
‘On board a Cape liner’, Leeds Mercury, 28 May 1887.
‘Funeral at sea’, Cleave's Penny Gazette.
Polehampton, Kangaroo land, 21 (emphasis in original).
Marjoribanks, Travels in New Zealand, 16.
‘Funeral at sea’, Cleave's Penny Gazette.
Barnard, A narrative of the sufferings, 249.
Unidentified male passenger, ‘Diary’, 8 Dec. 1839.
‘A burial at sea’, St Nicholas, 1 Apr. 1880.
‘Burial at sea’, Te Aroha News, 8 Jan. 1887.
J.L.W., ‘Funeral hymn for a Christian at sea’ in A parting gift for an emigrant friend, 78–9. London: Harry Woodbridge, 1854 (emphasis in original).
Written by Priscilla Owens of Baltimore in 1882, the hymn was introduced into Britain in the early 1890s and rapidly became popular.
On the hymn's popularity in the nineteenth century, see Richards, Imperialism and music, 370.
On the shifting fortunes of the anchor as a Christian symbol, see Kennedy, ‘Early Christians and the anchor’.
On the growing popularity of the anchor and maritime symbols like ships on nineteenth-century gravestones, see Stewart, ‘Gravestones and monuments’, esp. 120, and Weski, ‘Ships on gravestones’. For examples of anchors on nineteenth-century mourning jewellery, see National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, JEW0183 and JEW0192.
‘Funeral at sea’, Routledge's Magazine for Boys, 1 Nov. 1865, 660.
For examples of this didactic literature for children and especially boys, see ‘A death at sea’, Juvenile Companion and Sunday School Hive, 1 Feb. 1861, 33–6; ‘A funeral at sea’, Routledge's Magazine for Boys, 1 Nov. 1865, 659–65; and ‘Boylife afloat: funeral at sea’, The Boy's Own Paper, 8 June 1899, 575–6. For a similar story aimed at the woman reader, see ‘Off Cape Horn, or death and burial at sea’, Ladies' Cabinet of Fashion, Music and Romance, 1 Mar. 1840, 148–51.
For an example of one of the many books aimed at boy readers and which combined a didactic message with tales of maritime adventure, including a story about death at sea, see Anon., Adventures ashore and afloat.
Anon., Hints for improvement, 17 (emphasis in original).
ibid., 10.
Haines notes that surviving emigrant diaries suggest that these kinds of donated and gifted books and tracts were well used by emigrants during the voyage. Haines, Life and death, 34. In addition, many emigrants, particularly those from families and communities with strong religious traditions, would have known hymns like ‘We have an anchor’ or ‘Rock of ages’ off by heart or would have been able to readily refer to them via their family hymnbooks. Likewise the widespread popularity of Bunyan's Pilgrim's progress – with its core narrative about life as a spiritual journey – among nineteenth-century working-class readers also probably played an important role.
Tarlow, Bereavement and commemoration, 182.