CHARLESTON - From North and South they have come to this city where the Civil War began for the funeral of their ancestors - the crew of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, the first sub in history to sink an enemy warship.

"I can't really feel sad. We're here to celebrate the lives of these men," said Richard Barker of Jacksonville, Fla., the great-great-grandson of crewman James Wicks.

The crew is to be buried Saturday in a ceremony expected to attract thousands of re-enactors.

The funeral procession, in which coffins draped in Confederate flags will be pulled on horse-drawn caissons, will make its way almost five miles from Charleston's waterfront Battery to Magnolia Cemetery.

"I'm going to a funeral of a family member. All this re-enactment is nice, but I'm going to the funeral of a family member," said Emma Busbey Ditman of Silver Spring, Md., the great-grandniece of crewman Joseph Ridgaway, who was born on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

About 40 relatives of Hunley crew members are in Charleston.

"We represent all those people in the Confederacy who revere these men," Barker said.

Rebecca Farence of Harrisburg, Pa., said crewman Frank Collins was her great-grandfather's half cousin.

She said she didn't know about the Hunley until four years ago when she was up the coast in Myrtle Beach the day the vessel was raised.

"These are just extraordinary men - brave and strong who did a marvelous thing," she said.

The hand-cranked Hunley made history on Feb. 17, 1864, when it rammed a spar with a black powder charge into the Union blockade ship Housatonic.

But the sub never returned from the mission.

It was found off the S.C. coast nine years ago. It was raised in 2000 and brought to a conservation lab at the old Charleston Naval Base.

Researchers this week unveiled facial reconstructions and released biographies of the crewmen before the funeral.

"I'm very, very proud," said Elizabeth Mcmahon of Atlanta, a great-great-grandaughter of Wicks.

"I'm very proud of James Wicks and all the other crewmen - that they undertook the mission knowing two other crews had died."

The crew that will be buried Saturday was the third crew to die aboard the submarine.

The first drowned in the fall of 1863 when water from the wake of a passing ship flooded the sub at its mooring.

A few weeks later, a second crew, including designer H.L. Hunley, died during a test dive.

The crewmen to be buried Saturday will be buried next to the other crews in a plot shaded by oaks and palmettos.

Ditman said she learned about 12 years ago that she had a relative aboard the Hunley.

"It's been very emotional. My father died when I was a little girl and I knew almost nothing about father's family when I was a child," she said. "For me, it's finding my family."

And, she added, it's given her a new awareness of the Civil War.

"I hadn't been interested in the Civil War previously. It was such a horrible thing. I just didn't want to know about it," she said.