8 Headstones Dedicated – The Third Hunley Crew's Journey Ends in Charleston

By Scott C. Boyd

CHARLESTON, S.C. — The long and storied journey of the third and final crew of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley finally ended on June 24 when their headstones were formally dedicated in Charleston’s Magnolia Cemetery.

The remains of the eight crewmen were buried on April 17, 2004, but their graves did not receive stone markers until April 13, 2006. The June ceremony was the public dedication of those headstones quietly placed two months earlier. (See April 2006 story)

“They finally are home,” declared Randy Burbage, President of the Confederate Heritage Trust (CHT) and member of the Hunley Commission, which oversees all activities connected with the Civil War submarine. The headstones were officially dedicated in a brief ceremony organized by the CHT and attended by about 400 onlookers and reenactors.

The Confederate vessel made history on Feb. 17, 1864, by being the first submarine to sink an enemy ship, but did not return to base afterward. “They didn’t return from that trip that night but we’re helping them now,” Burbage told the crowd, his voice cracking with emotion.

“We owe them a lot,” he said. “I hope they’re looking down from heaven and saying ‘They respect us a lot.’…I’m proud to say we did it right, because they deserved it.”

“As you can tell,” Burbage explained several days later, “I have formed an emotional link with the crew. I can’t help but be moved at times. Having been in the tank during removal of the remains I was overwhelmed at times by how small the submarine is”

He said, “All of the crewmen’s stories and the way they came together from such diverse places is amazing.”

He continued: “The tight confines of the sub, no insulation, an extreme amount of moisture in the crew’s compartment, darkness and lots of noise describes the Hunley’s operating conditions. The men were cold and wet in a dark, noisy, cramped environment. All of the things we dislike as human beings.

“In spite of the fact that 13 men had already died [when the sub sank twice during training exercises], men kept stepping up to give the ultimate sacrifice. What devotion!”

“For them, this was not a suicide mission,” South Carolina State Senator Glen McConnell pointed out to the audience on this hot June afternoon. McConnell is Chairman of the Hunley Commission.

“For the remains of the crew, the journey was not final that night,” he said. “Today [is the] completion of a long effort to give them a respectable resting place.”

“For freedom to grow, it will require the kind of sacrifice these men made over and over again,” he said.

The eight coffins for the Hunley crewmen were buried in one large concrete vault in 2004. Each was placed in the order in which the men sat, single-file, inside the narrow, 40-foot vessel. This sequence was discovered when archaeologists exhumed the men’s remains from the sealed and intact submarine after it was raised in 2000 from the ocean’s floor near the entrance of Charleston Harbor.

Prior to the ceremony, the eight new headstones were each covered with a black veil. As each crewman’s name was read in turn, a designated person standing behind that grave removed its black cover, publicly unveiling the headstone for that man.

“The breeze was steady all afternoon until we started reading the crewmen’s names and unveiling the stones. When the first name was read, the breeze picked up to a strong wind and when the last name was read the wind died back down,” Burbage commented several days after the event.

“A friend once told me his grandfather said, ‘The wind is the breath of the dead.’ I believe the crew was with us last Saturday.”

The eight people who each removed a gravestone cover had connections to the man in that grave. For example, the headstone for seaman Frank G. Collins, who manned the fourth seat in the submarine, was removed by a native of Collins’ home state of Virginia.

Richard W. Hatcher III, originally from Richmond, Va., is the historian for Fort Sumter National Monument in Charleston. Not only a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans since age 16, Hatcher’s family tree has also gained him membership in the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War. He served on the Hunley Funeral Committee for the crew’s 2004 interment.

One attendee has a unique relationship to one of the Hunley crewmen. Second-in-command of the submarine on its final mission, Joseph Ridgaway turned out to be the only crewmen with a living descendant, provable by DNA testing. His descendant, Emma B. Ditman, watched as Ridgaway’s headstone was uncovered.

“My great-grandmother was [Joseph Ridgaway’s] sister, Mary Elizabeth Ridgaway,” Ditman stated after the event. She found the ceremony “moving” and “impressive.”

She came from Ridgaway’s home state of Maryland for the 2004 burial of the third Hunley crew.

A cousin who wrote a family genealogy around 1970 mentioned that one of her ancestors, Joseph Ridgaway, “lost his life as a member of the eight-man crew of the Hunley,” according to Ditman.

Despite it being “a story that has been handed down in the family,” she noted the accuracy of the detail about the crew having eight members.

Conventional wisdom held that the final crew had nine men, and some researchers were surprised to find only eight bodies when they excavated the submarine after its recovery in 2000.

When Ditman saw on the Friends of the Hunley Web site several years ago that one of the crewmen was believed to be “Joseph Ridgeway, from Richmond,” she contacted the organization to correct the spelling of the surname and identify his home as Talbot County, Md.

Her comments were forwarded to Linda Abrams, the forensic genealogist researching the backgrounds of the Hunley crewmen.

“I’m the person who knew how to spell ‘Ridgaway,’” Ditman remarked about her family’s spelling of the surname. She convinced Abrams, who realized that the name had an unusual spelling after looking very closely at the enlistment papers Ridgaway signed in Richmond when he enlisted in the Confederate Navy.

Later DNA testing sponsored by the Friends of the Hunley proved Ditman’s genetic link to Joseph Ridgaway.

“They were risk-takers or they wouldn’t have gotten into the sub,” Ditman said proudly of her ancestor. “I think he was looking for adventure,” her husband added.

“With the ceremony, the journey is now complete for these brave men of the final Hunley crew, giving them the respect and honor they deserve,” observed Kellen Correia, spokesperson for the Friends of the Hunley.

“Although, as they rest in peace, we hope to learn more about these men in the years to come to share with future generations."