Navy Burial at Sea

I participated in a few of these while in the Navy and plan on having my ashes spread at sea. It is free for veterans so there is that?

quote:

---

the obvious convenience of disposing of bodies in a wartime scenario

---

Fwiw they dont do it any more. Maybe in an all out war they'd have to go back to it.

Fun fact: the French Navy preserved bodies in salt where possible because a woman couldn't be verified as a widow without the body of her husband, thus couldn't remarry.

If that is their last wishes let them do it. The family can still have a memorial site if they’d like.
Honestly tell me how often you visit your loved ones gravesites. Let two generations go by and no one will visit.

Its origin is in practicality.

On long voyages, you just couldn't keep a dead body on board for hygiene and morale reasons. You keep one dead body around and pretty soon, it's gonna have buddies. Bodies start stinking QUICKLY. If you're more than a day out so of port, it's just not feasible to really do anything other than a burial at sea. ETA: Unless you were French, apparently.

It's only a very recent development where modern navies have the ability to store and/or transport bodies back to land (think on-board refrigeration preservation facilities and personnel and helicopters/aircraft), even during wartime. I think the last burial at sea during wartime might have been during the 70s or 80s. It's that recent.

Peacetime burial at sea is done fairly regularly, though. The Navy has a list of all the requirements and procedures for people who wish to have a burial at sea. I can understand the appeal for a sailor who spent a lifetime on the ocean. You can have the memorial service for the family on land and then have the Navy provide the final committal to the deep.