Diving War Graves

[miketsp]

Really comes down to the beliefs of each one of us, but as far as I am concerned a pile of old bones is just that, a pile of old bones. They don't represent the person that used them. What happens to the bones doesn't interfere with the respect we feel for the person that was.
It really gets me when we see queues of people waiting for organ transplants and a lack of donors because people don't want to "violate" their body after death.
This is all just a religious rip-off. As far as I'm concerned, once I go, if there is anything salvageable from my body that can help another being, they're welcome to it. The rest can be cremated to avoid adding to the junk pile.
There's a lot of hypocracy in this. Why so many Indian / Egyptian / Neanderthal etc remains in state run museums?
As far as wrecks go, I don't think I've ever dived a wreck where somebody didn't die.

Living people deserve respect, bones are just a pile of junk.

 

[MikeFerrara]

IMHO maritime war graves should be visited in the same fashion as land based war graves. By that I mean with respect, not disturbing or taking anything. To continue with the comparison: At land based war graves you walk on the path or grass, and do not open or disturb the grave or go inside the graves. For SCUBA divers that means you dive the wreck and respectfully view the wreck form the outside only, you do not enter the wreck.

I do not have the time to look it up now, but I seem to recall(I could be wrong) tells me it is also part of the maritime law that you do not enter the wreck of a war grave.

Why the focus on "war" graves?

I think people died on about every wreck I've dived. In some cases 100's of people were lost as in the case of the Lady Elgin or a wreck where all hands except one were lost like the Vernon.

Oh, and we enter the wreck. That's what wreck diving is. Of course one should dive within the law.

 

[SDAnderson]

Placing shipwrecks off-limits because someone died when the ship went down is misguided squeamishness.

So long as you don't disturb the wreck, the fact that there was a fatality on it is no reason to prohibit diving on it. Like the cemetary argument, where it's permissible (if a little macabre) to walk through a graveyard so long as you maintain a little decorum (dancing on the graves or tipping headstones is generally discouraged), we don't ban access to buildings where someone died, we don't close sections of highway where someone died, etc. We DO create parks where great battles were fought and actually encourage people to come and visit - the site of the battle of Gettysburg is now a 6000 acre park with millions of visitors every year.

Death is a part of life. Respect for the memories of the dead doesn't mean that we should avoid the places associated with their death. In fact, just the opposite is true - maintaining an emotional connection with the dead often requires a physical connection.

Besides, maybe those that have died on the wrecks would like the occasional visitor, someone to keep them company from time to time.

 

[cdiver2]

I am not against diving war graves but sometimes relatives of those lost do and I think there wishes should supersede those of recreational divers. I Also think that a lot of the opposition to diving on them is because there are always the few that will disturber the site and steal artifacts, it would make it a lot easy er to police the sites if there were no diving on them. Lets face it, it would do you no physical or monetary harm not to dive a particular site but would give some people peace of mind.

 

[The Chairman]

My dad served on the Yorktown... I got to sleep on that lady twice (with my son). That I was able to walk the same decks and climb the same stairs as my dad was awesome.

I have visited his grave in Pensacola Florida twice. Both times were highly emotional for me. But still, I saw many, many graves that have been "forgotten"... no one alive remembers the person or their deeds, or even their demise. Graves are a way of connecting us to our past both personally and as a nation and it is good to visit them as often as you are able.

But not being able to visit these ships because someone thinks I shouldn't is wrong. While I respect the fact that these men died during a war, I don't see their deaths as any more tragic than those that have died on countless wrecks since man first put to sea. Those who are entombed in the Arizona share the same fate as those who are entombed on the Titanic or the Edmund Fitsgerald.

I have never pulled an artifact off of a ship. But what is the difference between pulling personal effects off of the Titanic (on TV even) or off of a military vessel? Vessels that have been sunk in salt water have a limited time span. If artifacts are not recovered now, they may be lost forever. I know this is different in the Great Lakes, and I also agree that rules are different there as well. And they should be different in designated parks (Pearl Harbor, the Keys). Let's face it, the history of diving has until recently been mostly about salvage.

What's the answer? I surely don't know. But I would rather that we come up with a CONSISTENT approach that will preserve wrecks AND the artifacts on them.

 

[chickdiver]

Death is part of life. Death is part of war. While I certainly respect the dead (and, as an historian by training, what the dead can teach us about our past and ourselves) I cannot condone the idea that because a death occured on a ship, a submarine, on a beachhead, or in a field I should not go there. If the human race followed this line of thinking there would be no cultivable land, no factories, no civilization.

Take Belgium, for example. The battlefields of Ypres were the site of some of the most horrific events of WW I. The farmers of the region, almost 100 years later, continue to find ordnance, trenches, artifacts and human remains in the process of tilling the soil to grow crops. There is a major effort underway now to excavate and preserve parts of the trenches where major battles occured- but otherwise, life goes on at the scene of the acts.

While diving isn't the life sustaining effort that the growing of food is, a parable can still be drawn. If people are sheltered from our collective history, it becomes forgotten. For most, "history" is an intangible event that happened to "someone else" and has no effect on "me". However, when the individual sees the site of the event, lays a hand on the hull of a ship or submarine, and realizes that human beings once walked those decks and gangways, the event takes on some solidity and meaning. History should be a living thing, not words printed on a page. Preserve the past, respect the dead, visit the battlefields, and dive the wrecks.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

Really comes down to the beliefs of each one of us, but as far as I am concerned a pile of old bones is just that, a pile of old bones. They don't represent the person that used them. What happens to the bones doesn't interfere with the respect we feel for the person that was.....

....Living people deserve respect, bones are just a pile of junk.

This is a good example of one relatively extreme view that a few people may hold but that most people would disagree with.

There is nothing wrong with being different or with holding a minority view, but you always need to remember that you are in the minority and that your rights will end where the majority determines they will end. This is also one of those situations where expressing that view, in the context of wreck diving, just reaffirms the views of the "should not dive wrecks at all" crowd and incites them to action.

And it also leads others to adopt a more middle of the road and pragmatic opinion like this one:

I am not against diving war graves but sometimes relatives of those lost do and I think there wishes should supersede those of recreational divers. I Also think that a lot of the opposition to diving on them is because there are always the few that will disturber the site and steal artifacts, it would make it a lot easy er to police the sites if there were no diving on them.

Cdiver is exactly right that it is far easier to police a wreck to ensure no remains are disturbed or artifacts are taken if you just don't allow any diving on it at all. It is to a great extent an economic argument as agencies do not have the staff or resources to check each and every dive boat that visits the site. So if the dive operators, dive masters and wreck divers do not take it upon themselves to maintain acceptable limits and attitudes, then an increasing amount of legislation will be passed to make diving an increasing number of wrecks illegal.

The rationale used by legislators and the public is also highlighted by Cdiver:

Lets face it, it would do you no physical or monetary harm not to dive a particular site but would give some people peace of mind.

It is a correct statement but unfortunately ignores some of the more important, if less tangible, things in life. Diving a wreck, like walking a battlefield can be a very moving and emotional experience. It is an experience that can cause you to reflect on events and to consider the history and sacrifice of others in a way that cannot be achived anywhere else. Denying people the opportuity to dive those wrecks would not result in a physical or monetary loss, but would depreive them of something far greater. It would deprive them of the experience itself and all the meaning that is derived from that experience.

The easy way out is to pass laws based on a reaction to the attitudes and actions of a very few individuals who do not see the sailors entombed in these wrecks as deserving of respect, but it is a solution that deprives the rest of the diving community of the opportunity for a very valuable and enriching experience.

 

[MikeFerrara]

I am not against diving war graves but sometimes relatives of those lost do and I think there wishes should supersede those of recreational divers. I Also think that a lot of the opposition to diving on them is because there are always the few that will disturber the site and steal artifacts, it would make it a lot easy er to police the sites if there were no diving on them. Lets face it, it would do you no physical or monetary harm not to dive a particular site but would give some people peace of mind.

Well we know that some divers kick the reefs and it would be so much simpler to protect the reefs if we just kept every one away from them.

The forests would remain more pristine if no one was allowed to walk in them.

Game laws would be easier to enforce if no one was allowed to fish at all.

A wreck is just a pile of rotting junk on the bottom unless they are viewed, enjoyed and studied. If it's in salt water it'll rot and be gone in short order.

 

[matt_unique]

.....However, when the individual sees the site of the event, lays a hand on the hull of a ship or submarine, and realizes that human beings once walked those decks and gangways, the event takes on some solidity and meaning.

This statement resonates with me as well. Every time I dive the U853 for example I have to place my hand on the hull. As strange as it may sound it signifies a connection. Not a connection with the Germans who hours before killed 12 Americans of course but a connection with the power of the site and history. I have no objection to people diving war graves as long as the bodies are not disturbed.

--Matt

 

[Paul Evans]

The fact they are war graves is not relavant, the only reason this came up was an article I saw in Diver mag. this week which mentioned The Repulse. As has been rightly pointed out nearly all wrecks are places were people were lost. I apologise, I should have made this clear at the begining.