Crew of Hunley to be buried April 17

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.

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 five-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,” who Hunley Commission chairman Glenn McConnell, also the leader of the state Senate. “Very shortly, we will reunite all three crews in port.”

During the week leading up to the April 17 funeral, facial reconstructions and biographies of the crewmen will be unveiled. There also will 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 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. “It will be done with the dignity and honor that these men so richly deserve.”

• Port Royal looks for another new start

Port Royal has braced itself for boom times before — once when the State Ports Authority took over its port more than 50 years ago. But the good times never lasted and business on Port Royal’s waterfront always shrunk.

Now some leaders are excited about a new chapter. The port is closing, but town leaders and the authority are eyeing the port’s sale and the chance to redevelop some of the most prime property in Beaufort County.

“It will reintroduce a considerable part of the water’s edge to the people of Port Royal that has not really been accessible,” Port Royal town manager Van Willis said.

State Ports Authority chief executive Bernard Groseclose met with Gov. Mark Sanford last summer and the two agreed Port Royal, which lost $58,000 last year, was unnecessary. The massive port operations in Charleston dwarf Port Royal’s small terminal and a better use for the land along Battery Creek easily could be found, they agreed.

The exact future of the port is in the air.

State Sen. Scott Richardson, R- Hilton Head Island, and Rep. Catherine Ceips, R- Beaufort, are drafting bills that would close the Port of Port Royal, and kickstart the redevelopment and revitalization of Port Royal’s waterfront.

Redevelopment Commission member Joe Lee said it would be nice if the Ports Authority stepped aside and let the people of Port Royal decide the future of their waterfront.

Mayor Sam Murray is optimistic. Ports Authority officials “keep telling us they’re open to our ideas and suggestions. We have to wait and see.”

— From wire reports