STRANGE BURIAL.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18228, 12 November 1924, Page 10

STRANGE BURIAL.

URN COMMITTED TO THE DEEP.

(TBOK OTS . OWff COBBXSPO&PSHT.)

SYDNEY, November 5.

•Contrary to the custom of preserving the ashes in an:urn after.a cremation, all that remained ,of Mr Sydney Willoughby Bacon, managing director ■> of Messrs Bacon iand Co., one of the biggest, and oldest ;firms of process engravers in Sydney,' took ah unusual • form of disposal, at his own wish, following upon his cremation? His ashes werecarried three miles out to sea, where. a life-long, friend' of :Mr "Bacon committed them, encased in an earthenware urn, to the deep. There were several short speeches by old. friends, apoem, strikingly appropriate of the man and the occasion, was read, and on the return to Sydney the friends who had gathered at the simple and unnsual. burial drank- a toast in silence to the departed. Mr- - Bacon, who was- wellknown as a yachtsman, did not forgetthe employees in the big engraving business which he founded, for he be-, queathed to them. the whole of hi? interests in it. . One of the verses out at eea a« Mr Bacon's ashes were committed to the deep is worth.quoting:r— Though my tody ' be made of •od dust, . , , Ne'er in the earth shall my dead bones rust; Give my-corpse to the June's white-lust And sink my ashes at aea. ' _ ' Reeking, still with the swwt of the atiife, Ne'er a prayer have I to isaly, ' My lips long since' have "forgotten.the •Save this, save this: I have sorrowed eore in my day, \ But I thank "Thee, God, for my life. ,

Every sea-going vessel which enters Sydney harbour will pass over Mr Bacon's ashes, for it was in their track that they were quietly dropped into the sea.