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Re: 10,000 Expected at Hunley Funeral

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: May 17, 2003

"10,000 expected at Hunley funeral
Ceremony planned for next year to honor crew of Confederate submarine

By BRUCE SMITH The Associated Press

Charleston As many as 10,000 people, including Civil War re-enactors both blue and gray, will march in next year's funeral procession for the crew of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, organizers said Friday.

The funeral for the eight crewmen is set for April 17. The procession will wind its way more than four miles from Charleston's battery to Magnolia Cemetery on the Cooper River where two earlier Hunley crews are buried.

"Our dream to have all three crews laid to rest, together in port, will occur," state Sen. Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston, said during a news conference beneath the trees shading the Hunley burial plot.

"It will be an event that I think will bring tens of thousands of people to Charleston to participate and pay their respects," said McConnell, also chairman of the South Carolina Hunley Commission.

The Hunley sank in February 1864 after sending the Union blockade ship Housatonic to the bottom of the sea off Charleston. The sub, the first in history to sink an enemy warship, was raised with the remains of its crew almost three years ago and brought to a conservation lab at the old Charleston Navy Base.

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.

"It's been a long time coming," Randy Burbage, a commission member, told reporters as he stood in front of white gravestones marked with small Confederate flags. "This will be an opportunity for us to honor possibly the last missing-in-action men from the Confederacy."

"For the crew, this will be the final journey," McConnell added. "For the Hunley, she will be reconditioned, and her service will obviously be not to sink enemy ships but to tell the story of these brave crews."

He said he expected retired submariners from around the world to attend the funeral. In the weeks before the event, scientists plan to release pictures of the crewmen based on facial reconstructions.

But Warren Lasch, the chairman of Friends of the Hunley, said it could be two or three years before the mystery of why the Hunley sank is solved.

"It's a giant jigsaw puzzle -- forensics, archaeology, sediment analysis, the history, the metallurgy, biochemistry," he said. "There are all these pieces of the puzzle that have to be put together."

Although the funeral will be for the Confederates, the crew of the Housatonic will also be remembered, McConnell said. He said he couldn't imagine someone objecting to the funeral.

"I think anybody with good taste would not try to engage in any disruptions," he said. "I think this is one of those things that has universal appeal. These are the first submariners. You will have a few people, you always do, but the overwhelming majority of people around the world see this for what it is -- a wonderful, historical event."

From the start of the Hunley project, McConnell said, the commission has not been worried about being politically correct.

"We are going to be historically correct," he said. "We have no apologies for who these people are, and we are a proud part of the effort to lay them to rest. If somebody doesn't like it, that's just tough."

© Knight Ridder"