Aside from a big crowd for the solemn funeral ceremony April 17 for the eight men, the influx means one other thing -- money pouring into cash registers, with battle re-enactors and others arriving from around the country to tour Civil War sites and shop for a bit of memorabilia.

"We expect to be incredibly busy," said Rick Mosteller, a partner in Fort Sumter Tours, which shuttles sightseers back and forth to historic Fort Sumter, a Union stronghold that was the target of the first shots of the Civil War.

"We're looking forward to a great week," said Jane Ilderton, owner of Old Historical Views at 188 Meeting St., a shop that specializes in Civil War merchandise.

Organizers say they anticipate 5,000 to 10,000 re-enactors alone to show up. Attracting as many as 30,000 people would put the funeral and events surrounding it on the scale of the Cooper River Bridge Run, which attracted some 29,000 participants last year.

How many of the expected 30,000 will be honest-to-goodness tourists no one knows. A lot of those in attendance are likely to be local. Because at least some of the re-enactors tend to camp out, finding a hotel room shouldn't be too difficult.

Tourists who do check into area lodgings spend on average $225 per person per day, so the event is seen as a boost to the hospitality business, too.

Whatever the final numbers, officials with Friends of the Hunley expect the out-of-town contingent to represent Americans from across the nation. "We're getting calls from all over the country -- calls from California, the Midwest, Florida and Texas," said Kellen Correia, spokeswoman for the fund-raising arm of the project to raise and preserve the first submarine to sink an enemy vessel.

One place that should do big business is CSA Galleries, a 7,000-square-foot Civil War memorabilia store owned by state Sen. Glenn McConnell, chairman of the South Carolina Hunley Commission, and his brother Samm.

"We're the largest store of its kind," Samm McConnell said.

Along with Confederate flags, the display-chocked shop -- a one-time Montgomery Ward auto service center in North Charleston -- features most things a Civil War aficionado could want, from high-end collectible prints to uniforms, supplies to T-shirts.

It even sells toilet paper featuring the image of much-despised Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. There's also Maurice Bessinger's mustard-based barbecue sauce. Though the sauce was dumped by major grocers because of Bessinger's views on slavery, the McConnells say restaurants buy it by the case.

Samm McConnell said the shop, in North Charleston at the former site of Charles Towne Square, is normally closed on Sundays but will open on April 18 because of the exceptional amount of business he expects that day. "This is probably the biggest funeral of this kind since (Confederate president) Jeff Davis was put to rest," he said.

Jefferson Davis, the only president of the Confederacy, died in 1889 and initially was buried in New Orleans. His remains were moved to Richmond, Va., where they were reinterred amid great pomp and ceremony in 1893.

Another place that should do well is the Confederate Museum at 188 Meeting St.

The facility, which is owned and operated by the Charleston chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, has a collection that includes the South Carolina Secession Flag that flew over the old Customhouse, the first and last Confederate signal flags to fly over Fort Sumter, and hair from Jefferson Davis and Gen. Robert E. Lee.

June Wells, the museum director, said members of the Daughters of the Confederacy are expected to arrive in Charleston several days before the burial of the crew. "They're coming from California, Alabama, Texas and some of the northern states," she said.

Correia said tours of the Hunley are already booked solid on Friday, the day before the burial, and Sunday is filling up fast. "We are expecting lots of people," she said.

She said that the gift shop at the Warren Lash Conservation Center, where the Hunley is now stored, has ordered additional gifts for the crowds it expects.

Jack Thomson, owner and guide of the Civil War Walking Tour of Charleston, said he's already had a number of bookings, including a group from Maryland that has hired him for tours of several sites, including Morris Island. "I'm expecting to be quite busy," he said.

The Hunley was the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship, by ramming her spar into the side of the Union blockade ship Housatonic on Feb. 17, 1864.

The Hunley sank shortly afterward. It was found in 1995 off the coast of Charleston and raised in 2000. The remains of the eight crew members who went down with the submarine are to be buried in Magnolia Cemetery alongside 12 men who died in two earlier sinkings of the vessel.

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