Thestate.com will stream the ceremony live on April 17 (Courtesy of ETV)

CHARLESTON — This week, in a display of Confederate pomp not seen in a century, the crew of the submarine H.L. Hunley will be buried with full military honors.

Whether or not you question the cause they died for, consider this: These eight men willingly squeezed into a deathtrap, cranked their tiny vessel four miles out into the open ocean and gave their lives in the defense of their “country.”

They are Lt. George E. Dixon, J.F. Carlsen, James A. Wicks, Arnold Becker, Frank Collins, Joseph Ridgaway and two men known only as Miller and Lumpkin. Their attack on the Union warship USS Housatonic was a desperate attempt late in the Civil War to break the crippling blockade of Charleston Harbor.

The Hunley was the first submarine to sink an enemy vessel in combat. Thus, the crew’s actions changed the course of naval warfare forever.

The men went down with their ship. Why the Hunley sank is still a mystery.

From 1864 to 2000, the eight were entombed on the sub. Since recovery, their remains have been stored in blue plastic boxes in a morgue cooler at Warren Lasch Conservation Lab in North Charleston.

Today, their bones lie in state at Patriot’s Point Museum, home to the aircraft carrier Yorktown and other historic vessels. Their coffins are draped with Confederate flags and guarded by cadets from The Citadel.

Saturday, they will buried in an azalea-dotted plot in Charleston’s historic Magnolia Cemetery, tucked away among the live oaks, Spanish moss and the time-worn monuments to Charleston’s aristocracy.

They will rest alongside 13 other crew members who died in earlier missions, including Horace Hunley, the financier for whom the sub was named.

At each grave flies the “Stainless Banner” — the second national flag of the Confederacy.

Historians know little about the personal lives of the men and why they were willing to risk their lives in such a desperate attempt. But patriotism, glory and the thrill of danger are all likely reasons.

“The motivation would probably be the same as special operations soldiers today: duty, honor,” said Dr. Robert Neyland, chief of underwater archaeology for the U.S. Navy, and the Hunley project manager.

Scientists are learning more about the men each day from their physical remains, their DNA and the items in their pockets.

“We took them out bone by bone,” said Paul Mardikian, the Hunley’s senior conservator. “These men have been elusive.”

‘DANGEROUS TO THOSE WHO USE IT’

The crew of the Hunley to be buried Saturday was the third to man the sub — all volunteers.

Five members of the first crew drowned when the Hunley was swamped in the wake of a passing ship while moored at James Island.

The second, skippered by Hunley himself, sank in a test run when Hunley failed to close the forward ballast tank. All eight men aboard were lost.

The accidents soured Confederate commander Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard on the experimental craft.

“It is more dangerous to those who use it than the enemy,” the general said.

But the 25-year-old Dixon had been part of the project from the beginning. He convinced Beauregard to give it one more shot.

The crew’s willingness to volunteer for what many considered a suicide mission reflected the desperation of the Southern cause in 1864.

Neyland said just the rumors of a secret weapon caused the Federal fleet to adjust.

“It wasn’t a bad strategy,” Neyland said. “It moved the fleet farther out.”

Charleston was in shambles from years of daily shelling. Most families had moved to Columbia or other inland towns to escape the violence.

The South’s economy, dependent on the export of cotton, was shattered by a blockade that kept bales piled up in Southern cities and barred much-needed goods from being imported from Europe.

Confederate commanders desperately needed a way to drive the Federal ships, particularly the menacing ironclad gunboats, out of the harbor and open the shipping lanes once again.

For this, they turned to a stealth weapon, the Hunley, which they hoped would turn the tide of war.

‘OF MOST ATTRACTIVE PRESENCE’

Although he walked with a limp from wounds suffered in the battle of Shiloh, the Hunley’s young skipper, Dixon, struck a romantic figure.

His commander in Company A of the 21st Alabama Infantry described him as “very handsome, fair, nearly six feet tall and of most attractive presence.”

Dixon was considered a lady’s man. He wore cashmere and fine leather. His jewelry was exquisite.

An equally romantic legend grew up around him.

According to the story, Dixon was in love with a beautiful young woman from Mobile, Ala., named Queenie Bennett.

To keep her sweetheart safe from harm, Queenie gave Dixon a $20 gold piece as a good luck charm. He carried it with him always, rubbing it with his thumb and anticipating the day they would be reunited.

In the first day at Shiloh, Dixon was shot point blank in his left thigh. The bullet struck the center of the gold coin. It probably saved his life.

His wounds kept Dixon out of the infantry.

In May 1862, the young Kentuckian was back in Mobile, recovering from his injuries and working in a machine shop. Hunley and inventor James McClintock commissioned the shop to build a submersible ship — a torpedo boat, or “fish boat,” they called it.

The work resulted in the Hunley prototypes Pioneer and American Diver. They were fashioned from boilers and propelled by manpower — seven crew members cranking a propeller while the skipper guided the boat with hand-controlled rudder and dive planes.

Dixon helped develop and build the sub. He even served on the crew during testing in Mobile.

So when the young lieutenant received word of the Hunley’s second sinking, he went to South Carolina to plead with Beauregard to let him make the next try.

Inexperience killed the first two crews, he argued. Dixon had been with the Hunley from the start. He could make the sub work.

The Confederate commander relented. After several successful tests, Dixon got his chance for glory on Feb. 17, 1864.

‘MY LIFE PRESERVER’

The USS Housatonic was one of a string of warships ringing Charleston Harbor. It was on the right of the line, anchored in 30 feet of water about four miles off Sullivan’s Island.

The sloop was a newer vessel and large; its masts stretched 100-feet above it deck.

Lookouts had been briefed about the existence of strange Rebel craft. They shivered on deck as they peered into the darkness.

One man spotted what he thought was a log floating in the harbor. But the log was moving against the tide.

(Beauregard had ordered the Hunley not to submerge on its historic run — the previous accidents worried him.)

By the time the lookouts realized that the shape was no log, the Hunley was too close and too low in the water for the Housatonic’s big guns. The crew sounded the alarm and began peppering the strange vessel with bullets and buckshot.

The crew of the Hunley cranked furiously to thrust the boat toward its objective, jamming a 135-pound torpedo into the Housatonic amidship.

The Hunley crew then backed the sub away as the 150-foot detonation rope played out.

The torpedo exploded, setting off barrels of black powder stored in the Housatonic’s hold.

The big Federal ship rocked, burst into flames and settled to the bottom, its tall masts jutting out above the waves in the shallow water. Union sailors clung to the rigging. Most were saved. Only five died.

As planned, Dixon turned the Hunley back toward Sullivan’s, shining a blue lantern toward shore — a signal for Confederate lookouts to light a bonfire to guide the small boat home.

A lookout spotted the blue beam and lit the signal fire. But the Hunley never reached shore. It wouldn’t be seen again for 137 years.

In 2000, the ship was raised amid much fanfare and taken to the Lasch lab in North Charleston for conservation.

There, scientists carefully excavated its interior, filled with silt and muck.

As senior archaeologist Maria Jacobsen lifted a chunk of mud from the forward area of the sub, she felt a smooth, round, bent object. She smiled.

In her hand was a $20 gold piece, deeply dented from the impact of a Union bullet.

On one side was engraved four lines of cursive script that read:

Shiloh

April 6, 1862

My life Preserver

G. E. D

“It was pretty awesome for archaeology to prove the myth,” Hunley project director Neyland said. “For an historical artifact, it doesn’t get any better than that.”

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Acknowledgements: The Friends of the Hunley Web site, the National Geographic Society and the book “Raising the Hunley” by Brian Hicks and Schuyler Kropf were used as references for this story.