When Mt. Vulcan tore through the evening of 1871, its fury did not just uproot the living; it displaced the dead. It was a catastrophe that transcended time, reaching back to claim those who were already long gone. In a violent rewriting of the landscape, the earth buckled and receded, dragging centuries of memory with it, burying epitaphs not under the safety of the soil but beneath the weight of the sea. The disaster managed to haunt those who were already long gone, pulling their final resting places into the abyss. It is a haunting irony of Camiguin’s history: a community once anchored to the earth was suddenly cast adrift

Quantus tremor est futurus, quando iudex est venturus.
How great will be the quaking, when the Judge is about to come.

We left the Church Ruins of Bonbon and tracked the coastline toward the Sunken Cemetery. No, we were not tourists reenacting the plight of the people in 1871. It was a retracing of the tremors of the earth, following the same trajectory of the wrath of Mt. Vulcan from 155 years ago—a fury that, after putting a hard stop to vespers yet to be said, continued its descent to offer the memorials of the island to the altar of the abyss. 

Geography doesn’t waste time in Camiguin. The Sunken Cemetery sits in such haunting proximity to the Bonbon Church Ruins that the drive took barely two minutes, a short stretch of road that bridges two different kinds of wreckage. Before we could even process the silence of the nave, we were already standing on a deck overlooking the sea where a massive concrete cross now stands sentinel over the memories submerged beneath.

The perpetual mark of where the cemetery has sunk.

A distant view of the cross felt incomplete. We needed to be at its feet. We chartered a small boat, our boatman slowly guiding us across a liquid graveyard. It is a surreal feeling to realize that you are floating over the dead, as if Kharon were ferrying us as we trespass to the threshold of the netherworld. The land is still there, merely shrouded by the tides, along with the epitaphs of those who have gone to their rest long before the upheaval reclaimed them. 

Dies irae, dies illa, solvet saeclum in favilla.
The day of wrath, that day, will dissolve the world in ashes.

Then we reached the memorial. Over death stands the cross, victorious.

The memorial at the middle of the sea and the cross that stands sentinel over it.

The wind blew strongly as we stayed at the foot of the cross on the memorial, as if nature was reminding us how volatile its power could be. As we stood there on the concrete platform in the middle of the sea, surrounded by graves that we cannot see, there was awe for the beauty that Camiguin has become since the 1871 tragedy, and the feeling of poignancy for the mystery of the past that brought us to where we were.

It would have been impossible to find such words a century and a half ago, but the eruption of Mt. Vulcan turned out to be a beautiful disaster. It possesses a strange, quiet power to uplift the spirit, allowing those who travel there to witness the tragedies of the past through a lens of profound grace.

Uplifted in gratitude for being able to experience Camiguin.

Though we remained above the surface, there is a haunting beauty in what stays hidden. Beneath the hull of our boat, the memorials of 1871 are no longer just cold, submerged stones; they have likely become the foundation for a world we can only imagine. It is credible to think that where there was once only grief, there is now a sanctuary of coral gardens and silent, shifting life. Even without seeing it, you can feel the weight of that transformation; a reminder that nature has a way of reclaiming our deepest losses and turning them into something vibrant and new. 

Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis, voca me cum benedictis.
Once the cursed have been silenced, sentenced to acrid flames, call me, with the blessed.

We started our way back to the shore just as the sun started to get lower in the horizon. As the boat moved forward, Mt. Vulcan and Mt. Hibok–Hibok stood proudly, the way they did when we went out of the Bonbon Church Ruins. From the sea though, they looked more pronounced and more imposing, as if reminding every soul who the real masters of the land are.

In the light that was about to fade, the symmetry of the island became clear. If the ruins of Bonbon are the site of a broken vesper, then the Sunken Cemetery is the eternal response. It is a liturgy that does not require a priest or a bell, but is instead celebrated daily by the rising tides and the shifting currents.

As we touched the shore, the salt air felt like a final benediction. The 1871 eruption may have silenced the stones of the old capital, but here, in the deep blue silence, the island has found a way to keep praying. The liturgy of the tides continues, an amen whispered by the sea to the mountains that gave it birth.