Best of 2011: Sunday Favorites: Tomb of the Well-Known Sailors

This sailor’s grave in St. Barth’s has become a shrine to those lost at sea.

ST. BARTHELEMY -- Rain pelted down on the stone steps leading to artist David Wegman’s studio above Le Select in St Barthelemy. The rough weather blew open an old sheet serving as a curtain. Wegman’s nostalgic bungalow was quaint and primitive. It had no kitchen or bathroom – it was simply a small room with a bed and easel. The fact that a place like this still existed amongst a sea of multimillion-dollar real estate was uncanny.

As Wegman strummed his antique guitar from 1860, it was as if we had transitioned into the past, back in time two decades to when this story took place. The tale he would pass on was a local pirate legend, a post-mortem journey, and an eerie act of friendship.

Wegman divulged an uncommon story about his friend Kenny Capen. Such a good friend was Kenny, that Wegman liked to keep him close by. In fact, he kept part of Kenny’s skull and femur bone under his bed. Wegman believed that Kenny had sent him a message from beyond the grave on more than one occasion. Kenny, felt a need to become immortal, and has, because Wegman uses parts of Kenny in his artwork.

”A Pirate Wreck“ is the title of Wegman’s latest sculpture molded after Kenny’s remains. It is also the seventh in a series of sculptures done with Kenny’s ”parts.“

”[The piece] represents Kenny because he was a pirate and a wreck,“ said Wegman. He was a smuggler who did prison time in both Texas and Puerto Rico, he was an escapee -- he escaped from prison only to be recaptured and locked back up. Yes Kenny was a pirate, and that is why my art represents him.“

Kenny Capen was born in 1954 in Corpus Christi, Texas. He gave up the more common lifestyle to become a smuggling sailor. Kenny appreciated the Caribbean, especially the quaintness of St. Barthelemy.  He was often spotted sailing around the islands in his wooden boat, Espolita. Somewhere along the line, Kenny met Wegman, who was also a smuggler and old-school sailor. In no time at all, the two connected and formed a friendship.

One day, Kenny was in Antigua getting supplies and visiting old friends, when he suddenly dropped dead of heart failure. His nephew, Steve Capen of St. Petersburg, confirmed the diagnosis, but questions whether heart failure was the real cause of death.

”I just find it hard to believe that a 36-year-old would die of a heart attack,“ said Steve Capen.

Wegman’s sculpture ÔA Pirate Wreck’ features molds of his old friend Kenny’s skull – and cross bone

Some of his friends, including Wegman, decided it would be best to bury Kenny at sea -- a true pirate’s burial.

”We just thought that would be the most logical thing to do,“ Wegman said of the decision.

Steve Capen remembers the burial well. His father and mother flew down from Texas to see the ceremony.

”I was only fourteen, but I do remember them flying to Antigua for the burial, and them telling me what a nightmare it was.“

Instead of sinking to the bottom and resting there peacefully like a good corpse, Kenny, whose coffin had been weighted with chains and fitted with slits to let in the water, somehow managed to float to the surface for one last journey to St. Barthelemy (a distance of approximately 85 miles). 

”During the funeral, we watched as the coffin sank into the sea. Then everyone went back to shore. I guess after that, it floated to the surface and the wind brought it to Saint BarthÔs,“ said Wegman.

Wegman believes that Kenny traveled such a distance because some of his closest friends were unable to attend the funeral. ”[For that reason] Kenny just came to them instead,“ he said.

Two days after the funeral, fisherman found the casket broken up at Gouverneur Beach, St. Barthelemy, with a body inside. The gendarmes confirmed it was Kenny with an autopsy.  Wegman and a few others laid Kenny’s body to rest in a cemetery grave. He remembers it being Good Friday when they made the headstone out of a Heineken box filled with cement. After that, Wegman left St. Barthelemy to circumnavigate the world.

David Wegman in his St. Barth studio.

Eight years later, Wegman returned to St. Barthelemy. He decided he’d pay his respects to his deceased friend. He was cleaning the overgrown gravesite when he noticed the skull and femur bone had erupted from the dirt. Wegman explained that things of that nature occur frequently in the Caribbean on account of the weather.

”Now up until this point, I had been using mostly cow bones [for my art],“ said Wegman. ”It was then that I said to myself, why not use Kenny’s bones?“ Without consent, Wegman extracted the bones and took them back to his studio.

From that day on, Wegman used molds of Kenny’s bones to make traditional Jolly Rogers for his artwork. Currently, he is up to number eight. The bones have remained under Wegman’s bed for the last 12 years. When asked what he thought Kenny would think of his partially-excavated body lying under his bed, Wegman said, ”He would have loved it!“

In fact, Wegman claims that approximately two years later Kenny sent him yet another message.

It happened shortly after the 10th anniversary of Kenny’s death. Wegman was informed that fellow sailor, Roy (no last name was given), had fallen off his boat and was lost at sea.

Roy had been one of the friends responsible for burying Kenny at sea in Antigua. Wegman felt bad about Roy not having a proper burial, so he decided to dedicate Kenny’s grave to all the sailors who lost their lives at sea. He called it the Tomb of the Well Known Sailors, and decided to have a little dedication ceremony the next day.

Wegman and friends made a cross bearing the title of the tomb. They were sitting around the grave playing music and singing in a kind of Caribbean island-style devotional. 

”A monarch butterfly flew down and landed on the cross. That’s when another guest present at the ceremony whispered to me that a butterfly landing on something is a Buddhist sign meaning, message received,“ said Wegman. ”It was Kenny’s final message to me.“

Since then, the grave has become an infamous site. Ashes have been sprinkled upon it; names have been written on the cross. The burial site has become an eclectic mix of remains that mark a universal grave responsible for representing those sailors who were both loved and lost.