U.S. Navy marks Memorial Day with 21-gun salute from USS Constitution

Hundreds of visitors, many of them tourists from other countries, gathered for a commemoration for Memorial Day aboard the USS Constitution in Charlestown Monday.

The Navy marked the day with a 21-gun salute, and remarks.

Servicemembers honored the 275-plus people who died while serving on the warship, the vast majority from illness and disease. Twenty-eight were killed in battle. As bells tolled, servicemembers read the names of the fallen.

Before the names were read, Navy sailor Nicholas Albeniz talked about the significance of the day.

"Today, on board USS Constitution, America's ship of state, which has been around almost as long as our great nation, we are gathered to remember those who have died in service of this great ship, so that we may live our lives in freedom. They made the ultimate sacrifice to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, and we are the ones who benefit from their selflessness," he said.

Among those onboard was Herb Surrell from Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was visiting his grandson, a Navy sailor station in Maine, and the whole family decided to mark Memorial Day in Boston.

Surrell served in Okinawa during the Vietnam War.

He's disappointed that more people don’t honor Memorial Day the way it was intended.

"Well, all the guys who give their life whenever they was over there fighting for our freedom, that biggest part of it, that's what I go by. And a lot of people don't care about it. They think our freedom is free for anything, you know, and it's really not. You know, there are a lot of people out there that don't like us right now," he said.

A 21-gun salute followed the reading of the fallen, with the ships cannons firing at noon, on the minute, for 21 minutes: the highest honor in American military tradition.