Honoring the Hunley

February 22, 2010 by senatormcconnell

It was a clear, cool night for a beachside memorial on Sullivan’s Island, this as one of the nation’s biggest mysteries was remembered. Friday night the Confederate Heritage Trust held their tenth annual memorial of the Hunley’s attack of the U.S.S. Housatonic and those who died the night of February 17th 1864. Re-enactors honored the dead and the attack that preceded one of the biggest historical mysteries.

“That’s the only thing we haven’t been able to determine, is why the Hunley did not come that night,” Glenn McConnell said.

McConnell was a re-enactor Friday night, but you may know him as a state senator. He’s been honoring his mission to unlock the mysteries of the Hunley for over ten years. The submarine attacked the U.S.S. Housatonic successfully four miles off the coast of Breach Inlet before it vanished.

“She still holds a lot of secrets. We still are not any closer to conclusively saying why she sank,” McConnell told reporters back in 2001, a year after the Hunley was recovered from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

He now tells us that finally after finding remains and artifacts, they are close to answers. “I think within the year well know exactly why the Hunley failed to come home that night of February 17, 1864,” McConnell said. For him and many others, finding out what happened fills in the gaps in our history. “There’s a movie waiting for it, they want to know why she didn’t come home. Secondly for us it solves the mystery and tells the full chapter of how they gallantly tried to come in the struggles that they faced,” McConnell said.

“The Hunley is a South Carolina treasure. Its part of our history,” Randy Burbage with the Confederate Heritage Trust said. And as important as unlocking that mystery, for these men, is continuing to honor and remember those lost. The Hunley is now housed in North Charleston where it is being preserved. The Hunley Commission hopes to open a museum in North Charleston, once the submarine is restored.

ABC News 4

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