CHARLESTON, S.C. ? Thousands of men in Confederate gray and Union blue and women in black hoop skirts and veils escorted the crew of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, the first sub in history to sink an enemy warship, to their final resting place Saturday.

In what has been called the last Confederate funeral, the coffins of the crew members, draped in Confederate flags, were first taken to Charleston’s Battery and placed in a semicircle, a wreath set in front of each.

Then, a column of the uniformed re-enactors stretching a mile and half took the crew of the Hunley, which sank outside Charleston Harbor, to their final resting place in Magnolia Cemetery, about five miles north. It took the column more than an hour to file into the cemetery.

After horse-drawn caissons brought the coffins to the breezy, oak-shrouded plot, rifles crackled and cannons rumbled across the marsh.

“These men taught us, and they will teach future generations the meaning of words like honor,” said state Sen. Glenn McConnell, the chairman of the South Carolina Hunley Commission. “Their spirit will live beyond the horizon of time.”

Commission member Randy Burbage said it was a testimony to the crew that so many people had come to pay tribute to “eight Americans who died for a cause they believed in so long ago.”

“There are some who have scoffed at our efforts to pay tribute to these men saying that because they were Confederates, they don’t deserve so high an honor,” said Ronald Wilson, the commander in chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. “It is our duty to respect and remember these individuals.”

Fourteen Southern governors were invited to the ceremony, but declined to attend. Most cited scheduling conflicts, but some observers speculated they may be wary of the political implications of attending an event with thousands of Confederate re-enactors.

The hand-cranked Hunley made history on Feb. 17, 1864, when it rammed a spar with a black powder charge into the Union blockade ship Housatonic.

Pallbearers dressed in period clothing carry caskets to the grave site for burial during the funeral for members of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley in Charleston, S.C. The coffins were laid Saturday in a common grave, placed in the order which the crew sat on the hand-cranked submarine, in a plot along the Cooper River. Thousands of re-enactors in Confederate gray and Union blue marched in a funeral cortege a mile and a half long as the crewmen, in coffins draped with Confederate flags and pulled on horse-drawn caissons, were taken to their resting place.

But Hunley never returned from the mission. It was found off the South Carolina coast nine years ago and was raised in 2000 and brought to a conservation lab at the old Charleston Naval Base.