Organizers expect 30,000 at funeral for historic Hunley

CHARLESTON -- As many as 30,000 people are expected to honor the crew of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley at a funeral next month that will include horse-drawn caissons, 50-gun salutes and the mournful wail of bagpipers.

"It probably is the last funeral of the War Between the States," said state Sen. Glenn McConnell, chairman of the South Carolina Hunley Commission.

Organizers said Monday as many as 10,000 people, including Civil War re-enactors from both North and South, will participate in the April 17 funeral procession that will wind its way from White Point Gardens about four miles to Magnolia Cemetery.

White Point Gardens, also known as The Battery, looks over Charleston Harbor toward Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the war were fired.

Beyond the fort, farther out at sea, the hand-cranked Hunley became the first sub in history to sink an enemy warship when it sent the Union blockade vessel Housatonic to the bottom on Feb. 17, 1864.

The Hunley and its crew of eight never returned that night. It was located off the coast in 1995, raised in 2000 and brought to a conservation lab at the old Charleston Naval base. A $40 million museum is planned in North Charleston to permanently display the submarine.

Organizers said computer-generated pictures of the faces of the crew, based on their remains, will be released the week before the funeral.

"It's been a long time coming -- nine years," said Randy Burbage, a member of the Hunley Commission. "This is an opportunity for us to bury eight heroes."

The public will be able to pay respects to the crewmen aboard the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown and later in three area churches the week before the funeral.

"We're excited about the fact we're going to reveal who these people are. For once it will be more than a name -- it will be a personality, it will be a face, it will be a story," McConnell said.

But after years of research and excavation, it's still not clear why the Hunley sank. "That continues to elude us, but we're closing in on it rapidly," McConnell said.

Sometime after the funeral, the commission will announce which method will be used to begin conserving the Hunley late this year.

Scientists have looked at traditional electrolysis, cold plasma technology and the use of supercritical fluids.

The traditional way of conserving large marine artifacts, and one which takes years to complete, is electrolysis in which an electrical current removes corrosive salts from metal artifacts in water.

But sometimes the electrical field doesn't penetrate behind pieces bolted or riveted together, as on the Hunley.

In cold plasma reduction, hydrogen gas is blown over an artifact in a sealed container and the plasma formed pulls out impurities.

Supercritical fluids -- in this case the fluid would be water -- take on the characteristics of both a gas and a liquid under intense heat and pressure and can dissolve material.

"The science is driving us now in one direction and it looks extremely promising," McConnell said. "We're increasingly confident we may not have to take her apart" for conservation, he said.

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