Confederate sailor laid to rest after 143 years

It took 143 years to get this sailor buried after he died in a shipwreck off the coast of France in the English Channel. It's too bad that that we didn't have a way to identify him so that he could have had a marker at his grave site.

The unidentified man died in the 1864 sinking of the Alabama off the coast of France.
From the Associated Press
July 29, 2007

MOBILE, ALA. — The remains of a Confederate sailor, recovered several years ago from a shipwreck at the bottom of the English Channel, were buried Saturday in a handmade wooden coffin pulled by a horse-drawn caisson.

The unidentified sailor's skeletal remains were found on the underside of a cannon raised from the wreck of the Alabama in about 200 feet of water.

The Confederate warship was off the coast of France on June 19, 1864, by the Union warship Kearsarge. More than 400 artifacts have been recovered from the site by American and French divers.

The Alabama had a crew of about 120 members, most of whom were rescued by the victor and the British yacht Deerhound. About a dozen men drowned or were never heard from again, said Robert Edington, a Mobile lawyer and president of the CSS Alabama Assn.

Saturday's funeral procession began downtown at the statue of Adm. Raphael Semmes, commanding officer of the Alabama, and ended at Magnolia Cemetery, where the sailor was buried.