On a memorial WA ferry ride, ashes are sent to rest in Puget Sound

ABOARD THE M/V SUQUAMISH – Jane Schrantz, Ed’s wife of 48 years, gripped a peach-colored urn in her lap as she motored her mobility scooter to the rear of the ferry Suquamish. The rumbling engines quieted. Restoration Point, on the south end of Bainbridge Island, sat close on the horizon.

She tossed five flowered leis overboard, one at a time, letting them trail the slow-moving ferry.

Then Jane stood, gingerly with the urn in hand, and fulfilled a promise she’d made to Ed before he died in December. He wanted to be buried in the family plot of Puget Sound.

The urn splashed in the water, and a mate with Washington State Ferries watching the memorial whispered into his radio. The silent air was swiftly punctuated with three loud, low blasts from the boat’s horn.

The engines rumbled back to full power, just a minute or so after they stopped, and the 30 family members gathered closer, to hug and cry with one another. They joined in one final singing of “You Are My Sunshine” as Ed’s remains settled somewhere below.

Above, about 200 passengers waited to arrive in Bremerton. Regular ferry commuters may have known what was happening when the Suquamish slowed, since the ferry system has seen memorials on a near-daily basis this year.

Of all the services provided by ferries – moving millions of people each year as the nation’s biggest marine highway system, providing emergency rescue for people adrift and even welcoming the occasional political protest – hosting burials at sea is probably the least known, and most touching.

Zale Noah, who organizes the memorials as WSF’s customer program coordinator, said the program has existed for years, but was less formal and harder to discover before the pandemic. WSF brought the service back in 2022, and it’s grown every year since.

She chalks up the popularity of the service to the beauty of the Salish Sea, which many find an eternal comfort, whether they lived here or simply visited.

It’s kind of a homecoming,” Noah said, “a returning home.”

Tradition, and policy

A wind blew through the car deck of the Suquamish, lifting the hat off the head of Ed’s adolescent grandson and taking it overboard. Young James was sad – it was Ed’s felt fedora – but the rest of the family saw something special: Ed wanted his hat back.

Technically, though, the purloined hat broke the rules.

Everything that goes into the Sound must be biodegradable. The Schrantz urn, for instance, was made of salt derived from saltwater. Nothing else can be thrown in the water except a “floral tribute,” which cannot have plastic, wire, ribbons or any other nonbiodegradable materials.

Beyond all that, and deciding on the service and prayers, there’s little else for family and friends to do for a burial at sea. WSF organizes the rest. Only one memorial is allowed and scheduled per day, per route. They can only happen during slower times when there are fewer travelers, so usually between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. on weekdays, and 10 a.m. or earlier on weekends.

The boat’s captain has the final say, but memorials are rarely canceled but for bad weather. If they are, the service will be moved to another vessel, rescheduled or refunded.

For instance, Capt. William Brickham, who helmed the Suquamish the day of Ed’s memorial, said Noah notified him a day or so before the sailing. He took over the rest – finding the right location that’s at once lovely but out of the way of maritime traffic, making the announcement to passengers, sounding the whistle.

Brickham, who’s worked for WSF for a decade, said actions are spelled out in official policy, but some of it is simply tradition.

Burials at sea, after all, have a long history. According to the Naval History and Heritage Command, “the tradition of burial at sea has been in practice for as long as people have gone to sea. In earlier times, the body was sewn into a weighted shroud, usually sailcloth.”

Now, it’s more common for cremated remains to be scattered.

Many people have been laid to a watery rest, including Sir Francis Drake, Janis Joplin, Alfred Hitchcock and Neil Armstrong.

A long life

The state took over ferry memorials after WSF noticed that other private groups were offering services aboard public ferries, and charging for them.

“We decided to make it more formal and make it our own,” Noah said. “It came from a need to build community trust. It was an informal service, but it was really important to the community.”

It’s not clear when WSF began allowing memorials. Before COVID, it wasn’t something the agency promoted or even listed on its website. Someone had to call customer service, who would put them in contact with Noah’s predecessor, Tierra Russell.

Russell developed the policies that are still in place, including the fee of $150, which the agency says covers administrative costs. Memorial service guests still must pay to ride the ferry.

Most of the memorials occur on the runs between Seattle and Bremerton or Bainbridge Island, but the state also allows them on the trips between Anacortes and Friday Harbor or Orcas Island, Edmonds-Kingston, Mukilteo-Clinton and Port Townsend-Coupeville.

For Jane Schrantz, the choice of location and route was simple. Her parents had retired in Bremerton. Both were buried at sea, like Jane’s English seafaring grandparents. But unlike them, her parents’ cremated remains were scattered from a small boat filled with their five children. After Ed got sick with bladder cancer, he said he wanted to follow his in-laws.

“Ed wanted to be put in Puget Sound,” Jane said before the memorial service, sitting in the Seattle Ferry Terminal, holding tightly to the urn in her lap.

As she recounted their life together, her smiles outnumbered her tears, seven months after losing him. They met at Humboldt State University in Northern California. He studied forestry, she oceanography.

After college, he worked for the U.S. Forest Service in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest in California and spent summers on fire duty. After a long, hot summer day when they lived in Redding, Ed came home from a day of firefighting and proposed.

“His breath smelled of forest fire,” Jane said. A smile.

They married in 1976 and went to Disneyland on the night of their wedding.

“They remained kids,” said Elizabeth Finlayson, Jane’s sister. To the end, Ed continued to fiddle with model trains and Lego kits, and he collected coins and stamps.

Finlayson remembers when Ed and Jane’s youngest daughter, Ash, was still a baby, Ed tried to teach her to crawl, a memory that sticks with her as an example of his buoyant, childlike spirit.

“Imagine that,” she said, noting that Ed was 6 -foot-6. “He was a behemoth, and he was on the floor, showing her how to do it.”

In 1985, they moved to Wheaton, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C., where Ed spent the rest of his working life with the Internal Revenue Service.

Two days before Ed died, they sold the house they had lived in for nearly 40 years, where they raised three daughters and stored all their memories.

“I didn’t know he’d die that night. He didn’t know. He felt good that day,” Jane said. Tears. That day, the family got on a big group call and sang, “You Are My Sunshine” with Ed. It was Dec. 7.

Go together

In 2022, the state ferries hosted 128 memorials. The following year, 174. Then, 190. The Schrantz memorial was one of 173 scheduled so far in 2025, but Noah thinks there will be more.

“Since we’re only in the middle of summer, we’ve got five more months,” Noah said. “I’d say we might get 100 more scheduled.”

Noah speaks respectfully about those who want a Salish Sea burial, and notes that many of those seeking eternal repose in Puget Sound come from the maritime community, either military or commercial. Some lived on Bainbridge Island, or simply feel a connection to the region. Others wanted a service framed by the Seattle skyline, or just off Alki.

Susie Elliot, Ed’s sister, flew up from their original home of Los Angeles, and said Ed would’ve loved his own memorial.

“He loved the trees. He loved the water. He loved the mountains. It’s all right here,” Elliot said. “It was perfect.”

The reasons for choosing Puget Sound are many. Jane has her own and, someday, she’ll join Ed, her parents and her grandparents. She kept some of Ed’s remains with her.

“I’m too emotional to let go of all of Ed’s ashes,” Jane said. “When I go, they’ll put our ashes together. And we’ll go together.