Posted on 12/30/2002 5:35:20 AM PST by Captain Shady
Posted on December 30, 2002
Riley writes to McConnell about downtown Hunley plan
Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. still wants to bring the Confederate sub Hunley downtown. But now he's ready to build a park to go along with the historic vessel.
The Charleston mayor wrote Hunley Commission Chairman state Sen. Glenn McConnell that this plan to use the Charleston Museum would get the sub on display quickly and be cheaper than the current $40 million proposed for a place to house the Hunley.
The Hunley was the hand-cranked submarine that sank after sinking a Union blockade ship off Charleston in February 1864.
The vessel was raised two years ago and brought to a conservation lab at the old Charleston Naval Base.
Riley's plan calls for a 40-foot reproduction of the submarine on a pier next to the South Carolina Aquarium. He said the story of the Hunley would be told to tourists through tablets, plaques, artwork and diagrams.
"The visitor ... would be able to go to this point and from it look out to the opening of Charleston Harbor and see the site where the Hunley went down," Riley wrote to McConnell, R-Charleston.
"You would be able to walk out on the pier where the Hunley reproduction is located and almost feel the same connection that the Hunley sailors had with the waters of Charleston Harbor," Riley said.
McConnell had earlier rejected bids to house sub and its museum from Charleston, Mount Pleasant and North Charleston, calling them too low.
Riley's latest suggestion might not be what McConnell is looking for.
McConnell, the state Senate President Pro Tem, said Friday the Meeting Street museum looks too small for the submarine. He said the site would also diminish his goal for a 40,000-square foot museum dedicated to the Hunley and Civil War maritime history.
"I appreciate his trying to think of ways to handle it, but the Hunley would end up diluting that facility, and I don't think that's in the best interest," McConnell said.
McConnell says he's in no hurry to find a permanent home for the submarine because the future conservation plan is still up in the air.
"I don't want to scale back this project," McConnell said.
The highest of the three bids McConnell and the commission received came from North Charleston, which pledged about $11 million to build the museum on part of the old Navy Base.
Mount Pleasant bid $7 million to house the sub at Patriot's Point Maritime Museum. Charleston has offered about $5 million to put the Hunley near the Aquarium.
In his letter to McConnell, Riley said instead of backing the $5 million bond issue, the city could offer $550,000 per year for 15 years, which would amount to more than $8 million.
Riley said a Hunley waterfront park could be very inspirational.
"Remember, this is essentially the site where the Hunley was first launched and where Horace Hunley and the other sailors who died" in the second sinking were taken from the submarine, Riley said.
"Arguably, this site without a building becomes a far more powerful and emotional place."
McConnell says he wants to see how the cities augment their bid packages or raise their cash offers before going forward.
"No offer is any good unless it can take us to the finish line," McConnell said.
Information from: The Post And Courier
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The fall of Charleston in the Civil War may be clearer thanks to Robert Cornely's recovery of letters from a Navy man.
Cornely, a paper money expert from Atlanta, bought about 1,000 letters connected to William T. Sampson, who joined the Navy before the Civil War and eventually rose to the rank of rear admiral, commanding the fleet in the Spanish-American War.
"I had been interested enough in history to know who Sampson was," Cornely says. "I soon realized they were a Rosetta stone of naval history."
Sampson and his 45-year career are not well known, partly because papers have been destroyed and many of his missions were secret. Sampson witnessed the final days of the Confederacy in Charleston, and led the inquiry into the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana harbor - an incident that sparked the Spanish-American War.
And Cornely hopes by transcribing the letters he'll find out more about the mysterious New Yorker who helped build the modern Navy.
The discovery of Sampson's early letters - most sent to his first wife and his children - sheds new light on his years as a young officer. About 60 letters cover his time as executive officer of the U.S. ironclad Patapsco in the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron off Charleston.
Others are letters to Sampson from his family, officers and even friend Teddy Roosevelt from 1861-1884.
Cornely and his wife, Cindy, bought the letters in 1995 and are still at work transcribing, but would like to see them published in a series of books. Sampson wrote about prisoners of war, battles and longed for Maggie, his first wife.
"I am quite ashamed of the poor returns I make for all your long letters; yet it must be considered that you have a great deal to write about in our little pet, while I have little or nothing," Sampson wrote from his ship off Charleston on Oct. 21, 1864. "I hoped to find things quite stirring when I came up here, but one soon becomes accustomed to seeing people shoot each other."
In another note, Sampson seems embarrassed to be missing his wife, since he had seen her just four months before. He describes his ship's conditions as hot, stinky and roach-infested.
"They are so extremely personal, like someone's diary," Cindy Cornely says. "It is a very personal look at someone's life."
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