Some commentary on "The Waste Land"

The shortest section of T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" titled Death by Water I found interesting, maybe mainly because I felt I could understand it, but also because I think it has an interesting message. As I understand it, the poem tells of Phlebas who has been dead for a fortnight, two weeks?
In his death he has "forgotten the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell," which I take to mean that in death he no longer has the ability to remember the deep ocean.
The mention of "profit and loss" implies that he worked on the sea and made his living from it.

The second stanza describes Phlebas's bones under the sea, tossing and turning in the ocean current. It also describes how he "passed the stages of his youth" on the sea, meaning that he spent most of his life on the ocean. As a final note, Eliot wants the reader to think about Phlebas and consider his fate. In the last stanza Eliot seems to be warning other sailors to examine the story or Phlebas and to be reminded that youth eventually comes to an end and death is inevitable.

It's possible that this section is included in "The Waste Land" because being a sailor is another way to live a machine-like life; another form of living just to survive, which seems to be a recurring theme throughout "The Waste Land." Death by Water might also be included because the man who has died is an example of a common death. Besides a name, this character has no distinctions from any other person who has died at sea, much less on earth.