Ship Urns

Our ship urns are for those whom the sea had a claim on, from merchant sailors and navy veterans to families whose history began with a ship crossing. This collection honors a life of maritime competence, whether lived through months away at sea or a lifelong love of sailing. Each cast aluminum piece features an engraved sailing ship or viking ship and is available in full-size, sharing, or keepsake sizes.

We offer two-tone engraving of a name and dates to make the inscription part of the design. These pieces are for those who always belonged to the water.

For those who lived a life measured in absences, the sea was a constant presence. Whether they served in the navy, worked in the merchant service, or sailed simply for the love of the water, they knew the rhythms of the tide and the temperament of the wind. They were the people who could sense a change in the weather before anyone else on the boat, relying on a sharp attention to detail in an environment where no engine could override a wrong decision.

For some, the connection to the sea is a family legacy, a story of ancestors who arrived on a ship and kept that history alive through three generations. This collection is for the person who found solace in maritime history or who spent their time building detailed models. Such lives are often characterized by a certain competence and a low tolerance for fuss, preferring the steady, un-sentimental reality of the water to anything more complicated.

These ship urns are cast from aluminum and are available in a range of painted finishes or a hand-applied enamel with hand-detailed silver bands. The artwork is engraved directly into the metal, with the collection featuring two specific designs: a sailing ship and a viking ship. These choices provide a way to honor a person whose identity was as enduring as the vessel itself.

To accommodate the way a family wishes to remember them, this collection includes full-size urns, sharing urns, and keepsake urns. This allows for a single piece or several, so that the pieces can be distributed among loved ones or kept together.

To make the tribute more personal, we offer the option of two-tone engraving for a name and dates. This inscription is cut directly into the surface, making the name and the years lived a permanent part of the design.

Some people were buried in their ships. The Oseberg ship was built around the year 800 and placed into a burial mound at a farm near Tonsberg in Norway no earlier than 834, with two women inside it and sleighs, carts, and textiles alongside them.

It sat in that mound for eleven hundred years until Gabriel Gustafson and Haakon Shetelig excavated it in 1904 and 1905. It is one of the best preserved things to survive the Viking age, and it survived because somebody decided a ship was the right thing to be left with.

For a family, the design on the urn is the water the person belonged to, and everything they brought back from it.

Source: Wikipedia, Oseberg Ship

If the person you are remembering was defined by a quiet competence and an instinct for the wind, then these designs will read as theirs. A sibling or a friend will recognize in the engraving the essence of someone who found their place among the swells.

You may choose this design because the water was where they belonged, and because they spoke of it for the rest of their lives. When you look at these pieces, you will see them there, standing on a deck, watching the horizon as the waves move toward the shore.

Our guide to selecting the right size urn