RMS Windsor Castle - Burial at Sea
by Published on 7th September 2019 11:23 PM
RMS Windsor Castle - Burial at Sea
1 Comments by Brett Hayes Published on 7th September 2019 04:51 PM
Burial at Sea ( Late 1960s).
We were outward bound on a voyage to South Africa aboard the flagship of the Union Castle Line, RMS Windsor Castle.
Turned to not long after the chilly dawn had broken, we were holystoning and washing down the boat-deck before any health-seeking passengers might be
up and about for fresh air or exercise.
Some sailors called their blocks of soft sandstone ‘bibles’, and others with slimmer, worn-down versions, called them ‘prayer-books’, and were sliding them back and fore attached to long handles as they scoured the smooth pale wood of the planking.
We had been at it for some three quarters of an hour, when an AB_ a large, cheery sailor from St. Helena_ announced, “ She’s slowing down a pace. Won’t be long now till six bells when they’ll ring down and cut off the steam. And then we’ll hear a splash as they tip him over the side.”
To which another responded, “ Yeh, at seven o’clock, we’ll be one less. Some poor sod’s going over the wall after forking out a couple of hundred quid for a holiday. Fancy paying for the passage to your own funeral!”
I hadn’t been a sailor long, a DHU on my second deep-sea voyage.
Only a day or so before, I had witnessed for the first time the ceremony of Crossing the Line ( what I’d always known as the Equator) and, although we ratings were treated as personae non gratae and kept well away from the aquatic fun and games associated with King Neptune and Davy Jones’ Locker, most of us observed the frivolities from a distance as we worked, and felt rather amused by the antics in the swimming-pool. But just a few days later, ironically, we were going to bury an ailing, middle-aged passenger.
It was rumoured he’d been unable to cope with the sudden change of weather from the winter cold of the UK to the summer heat of the tropics.
A romantic at heart, I had imagined a burial at sea in which the ship’s master would be standing on the poop-deck, bible in hand, pages fluttering in the breeze, perhaps reading solemnly the Office for the Dead, then bowing his head in dignity before committing a fellow mortal to the deep. But I saw nothing like that.
In fact, as I peered over the leeside rail, all I could see was the end of of a board. It had been exposed by a stray gust blowing back a corner of the Union Jack draped neatly across it. The gunport doors had been opened wide against the port side, and I thought of how, just about a week before, I had boarded the liner through the very same entrance late one evening in Southampton when she was dressed up in lights while busy loading stores in readiness to sail the following morning.
“I bet they talked his widow into having him buried at sea,” said one.
“ Aye, that’s a fact,” rejoined his mate. “ Cheaper than keeping him in cold storage among the fruit and veg.”
“ Or in the meat-store,” laughed the other.
“ Yeh, or get carried down the gangway and get ripped off for loads of rand by some yarpie undertaker when we dock in Capetown,” chimed in a third.
I felt the breeze weakening as the vessel continued to lose way. The telegraph had probably been rung down to Stop, and the ship was noticeably slowing. Won’t be long now, I thought. By this time, most of us had drifted to the rail, along with our easy-going bosun’s mate.
All I could hear was the splattering of waste cooling-water from one of the engine-room’s discharge pipes from a vent on the port quarter, and the soft hiss of the ship’s hull as it slipped slower and slower through the sea. As the vessel seemed gradually to be coming to rest, I saw that the end of the board had been lowered. But nothing happened.
Then I saw it being canted down more steeply, but still nothing happened until, beyond my vision, the inboard end seemed to be lifted higher, then jerked up and shaken. The next moment, I heard a protracted hiss as a long white bag slid down the board and shot out feet-first beneath the flag.
As if in slow motion, the body began its descent toward the sea some twenty feet below, looking tightly wound in bandages like a mummy. It was an eerie sight. But something was wrong. Instead of falling cleanly, it began to tilt slowly forward until, with a huge splash, it struck the water with a belly flop to lie awash, weltering in the seething foam. As the spume cleared, I could see a row of crude, coarsely sewn sail-twine stitches running up the length of the canvas sack enclosing it. And its back looked as if it had been punched full of holes like a colander. They’d been cut out most probably with a deck-knife perhaps to aid the ingress of water or to get rid of bodily fluid or gas. It was a macabre spectacle.
I just hoped the widow hadn’t seen it.
For some moments that felt like an age, the body lay there, as if in shock, until it began to sink and slide slowly beneath the surface. Fascinatingly, it seemed to ghost from white to green as it submerged until at about two to three fathoms down it vanished from our sight.
Then a grass-green wreath was pitched into the sea, entwined with roses and yellow chrysthanthemums. It seemed to float slowly astern, for the ship, almost indiscernibly, was still under way.
Shortly after, presumably after the widow had been escorted from the scene, I saw that a package about the size of a shoe box, clad in canvas and roughly stitched up, had been thrown in too.
“You know what that is, don’t you?” asked an EDH.
“No,” said a young OS.
“Them’s ’is innards. What the doctor took out in the post-mortem: ’is ’eart and lungs an’ stuff.”
“God, was that what it was?”
“Yeh, you bet that’s what it was.”
“And did you see the way the body ’it the water?” someone else asked fatuously,
as we turned from the rail.
“Aye, flat on ’is f—ing face!”
“Someone will get a bollocking for that.”
“Yeh, what a smack! Must ’ave opened ’im right up!”
‘’What do you mean?” asked the OS.
“The stitches, ain’t it?” And he made a gesture from his throat to his navel.
“Oh,” said the OS.
“And he stuck to the board, as well!” cut in another, “Body must have wept.”
“Aye,” said his mate, “or not enough French chalk!”
At which someone else decided to join in and say his piece, “And did you see how long he took to sink? Some bastard must have only put in half a firebar for ballast.”
“Or they were short of a shackle,” laughed another.
And they all shared in the mirth, though somewhat uncertainly, due perhaps to the gravity of what had they had just seen.
We felt the shudder of the deck and the kick of the twin screws after the telegraph had rung Slow Ahead, and we were turned to again to finish washing-down. The vessel had resumed its course, but I, like many other young crew-members, would look back wonderingly along the wake to where the burial had taken place, long after the wreath had disappeared over the horizon.
Although we felt sorry for the passenger who had died, we were deeply relieved that it wasn’t one of us, especially when another wiseacre said somewhat cavalierly, “Any’ow, the sharks will ’ave got him by now.”
Or another, as if vying not to be outdone, or to seem coolly detached from the experience, said, “I seen it ’appen many times before: I remember I did a round-the-world cruise with P and O once. Buried six of ’em.”
And at stray moments while we worked, I caught on the breeze some snatches of conversation about the sight we had witnessed. Some of the sailors didn’t say much, but others, perhaps, found it easier to come to terms with the experience through the use of gallows humour.
I couldn’t help but overhear a grimmish dispute between two deckies who believed that an extra stitch was always put in to make sure a man was dead: one said the sail-needle was passed through his lips, whereas the other maintained that the last stitch was made through his nose, according to an old naval tradition.
“You mean an old nasal tradition, don’t you?” joked someone else who’d been listening in. After a moment of awkward silence, the two hands twigged that he’d just been playing with words and gave a sort of half-hearted laugh in response.
Yet, despite the morbid banter, we were acutely aware that a former passenger, a fellow mortal, might still be sinking slowly to the bottom of the biggest graveyard in the world or, for all we knew, was already lying on the sea-bed, burst open by the enormous pressure and his remains soon after to be detected in the darkness by scavengers like hag-fish or crabs.
And what about the grieving widow? sedated, no doubt, by the ship’s doctor. How would she be feeling? What thoughts were on her mind? None of us could know that either.
About twenty minutes later, the bosun’s mate knocked us off and we trooped below for breakfast, but not before we’d had to take back and hand down our holystones, bears and squeegees to the taciturn lamp-trimmer standing expectantly at the bottom of the ladder in his locker below deck.
He was a glum sort of chap who didn’t seem to have much to say to us mere ratings at the best of times, but perhaps more so that morning, as he, alongside the bosun, or so we would be told, had prepared the corpse for burial the previous evening, using an old bunk-sheet for a shroud, and had wrapped this round with strips of canvas duck whose crudely sewn stitches were so shockingly exposed less than an hour or so before when the body had landed face down with an awful smack upon the surface of the sea below.
[ NOTE:
Though the events are essentially factual, some of the characters and dialogue are fictional.]
Glossary of Deck Ratings
( In Descending Order of Seniority).
AB Able Seaman
EDH Efficient Deck-hand
DHU Deck-hand Uncertificated
OS Ordinary Seaman
By:
Brett Hayes
( R863743)
