Crew of Hunley to be laid to rest

Associated Press

CHARLESTON, S.C. - As many as 50,000 people are expected to come to Charleston in April for what organizers are calling the last Confederate funeral - the burial of the crew of the submarine H.L. Hunley.

The Hunley was the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship and Tuesday was the 140th anniversary of the Hunley mission.

The vessel with its crew of eight sank on Feb. 17, 1864, after sinking the Union blockade ship Housatonic off Charleston. The sub was raised in 2000 and brought to a conservation lab at the old Charleston Naval Base.

About 2,000 people, many of them Confederate re-enactors, have signed up to make the almost 5-mile funeral march on April 17 from Charleston's Battery to Magnolia Cemetery.

There the crew will be buried next to the remains of two other crews who died in earlier sinkings.

"We are into the home stretch now," Hunley Commission Chairman Glenn McConnell said Monday. "Very shortly, we will reunite all three crews in port."

The Hunley sank three times during the Civil War - once after it was swamped at its mooring, again during a test run and finally after its sinking of the Housatonic.

During the week leading up to the April 17 funeral, facial reconstructions and biographies of the crewmen will be unveiled. There will also be lectures, ceremonies and vigils.

The public will be able to pay their respects to the crew at the aircraft carrier Yorktown at Patriots Point on April 12 and 13, at John Wesley United Methodist Church on April 14, the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist on April 15, and the Church of the Holy Communion on April 16.

The day of the funeral, the remains of each of the crewmen will be loaded onto a separate horse-drawn caisson for the funeral procession.

"It is a funeral, not an event, not a flag rally," said Kay Long, a member of the burial committee of the South Carolina Hunley Commission. "It will be done with the dignity and honor that these men so richly deserve. It will be history in the making."

Information from: The Post And Courier



BT


Tracy Johnson
MSI Schaevitz Sensors 

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