The Mary Rose ship: Henry VIII's great carrack
Work on the Mary Rose began in Portsmouth on 29 January 1510, a few months into the reign of the young Henry VIII. She was launched in July 1511 and towed round to London to be rigged, decked and armed. The new king had inherited a small fleet with only two sizeable ships, and the Mary Rose and her near sister the Peter Pomegranate were the first big warships of his reign: a carrack of about 500 tons with high castles at bow and stern and a low open waist between them.
The popular story says she was named after the king's sister Mary Tudor and the Tudor rose. Historians of the ship have found no evidence for it, and point instead to the Virgin Mary, often called the mystic rose. Whatever the reason, the name stuck to one of the most successful ships of the early Tudor navy. She was armed with heavy guns firing through gunports cut in the hull, still a recent idea, which made her one of the first English ships able to fire a broadside.
Her fighting career began in 1512, when Sir Edward Howard, the new Lord High Admiral, chose her as his flagship against France. She fought at the battle off Saint-Mathieu near Brest that August, and in 1513 she was Howard's flagship again, shortly before he was killed boarding a French galley. Peace followed, and she spent long spells laid up "in ordinary" in reserve. In 1536 she was substantially rebuilt, growing to roughly 700 tons with an extra tier of broadside guns.
The Battle of the Solent, 19 July 1545
Thirty years later England was at war with France again. Henry had taken Boulogne in 1544, and in the summer of 1545 a French invasion fleet under Admiral Claude d'Annebault sailed into the Solent with 128 ships on 16 July. The English had around 80 ships ready at Portsmouth, too few to meet the enemy in open water and short of the oared galleys that worked best in sheltered water, so they drew back into the harbour.
On 19 July the French galleys rowed in against an English fleet stuck without wind. When a breeze came up the English sailing ships went on the attack, with the Henry Grace à Dieu and the Mary Rose in the lead. Early in the fight the Mary Rose heeled hard over to starboard and the sea poured in through her open gunports. Guns and stores broke loose below decks, the galley oven collapsed, and men struggling up the companionways found the anti-boarding netting stretched over the waist and sterncastle above them. Of a crew of at least 400, fewer than 35 got away. Her commander, Vice-Admiral Sir George Carew, went down with her. The king was ashore at Southsea Castle and saw his ship go down about three kilometres off the harbour mouth.
Why the Mary Rose ship foundered is still argued over. The only confirmed eyewitness, a Flemish survivor, said she had fired her guns on one side and was turning to bring the other side to bear when a gust caught her. Hall's Chronicle blamed open, low gunports and heavy guns. A French officer, Martin du Bellay, claimed French gunfire sank her, a version that the Portsmouth geographer Dominic Fontana has argued for using the battle as drawn in the Cowdray Engraving.
Lost, found and raised in 1982
Within days of the sinking, the Duke of Suffolk was organising Venetian salvors to lift her between two hulks. She lay at a 60 degree angle, sunk deep into the clay, and the cables would not pass under her; the attempt brought up rigging and some guns, and the main mast snapped. Later teams were paid for raising guns as late as 1549, and then the wreck slipped from view under the silt of the Solent.
In June 1836 fishermen snagged their nets on old timbers, and a diver named Henry Abbinett went down to free them. The pioneering helmet divers John Deane and William Edwards followed, bringing up guns, longbows and timbers; a bronze gun cast in 1537 identified the ship.
The modern search began in 1965, led by the journalist and amateur diver Alexander McKee. A chart of 1841 marking the wreck helped narrow the search, and on 5 May 1971 the first timbers of the buried hull were found. The Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 gave the site legal protection, and the Mary Rose Trust took on the excavation. Over four diving seasons from 1979 to 1982, volunteers and professionals put in more than 22,000 hours under water, emptying the hull before it could be lifted.
The raising itself nearly went wrong twice. The hull was bolted to a steel lifting frame, moved under water by the crane barge Tog Mor into a padded cradle, and on the morning of 11 October 1982 the whole package came up. The first timbers broke the surface at 9.03 am, watched by Prince Charles and a crowd of small boats, and a corner of the frame slipped more than a metre before she was safely ashore.
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1510 | Construction begins in Portsmouth on 29 January |
| 1511 | Launched in July and fitted out in London |
| 1512 | Flagship of Sir Edward Howard against France |
| 1536 | Rebuilt to about 700 tons with more heavy guns |
| 1545 | Sinks in the Solent on 19 July |
| 1836 | Fishermen snag the wreck; first divers bring up guns |
| 1971 | Hull timbers located on 5 May |
| 1982 | Raised on 11 October |
| 2013 | New museum opens over the dry dock on 31 May |
| 2016 | Drying finished; hull shown without the hotbox |
Thirty years of spraying and drying
Timber that has soaked in seawater for four centuries cannot simply be left to dry. Without treatment the wood could have shrunk by up to half, warping and splitting as it went. From December 1982 the hull sat inside a building where it was sprayed with chilled, filtered fresh water. In September 1994 the trust switched to polyethylene glycol, a waxy compound already used on the Swedish warship Vasa, sprayed on through 522 metres of pipework and 315 nozzles. A first phase with low molecular weight wax soaked the inner wood; a second, heavier grade strengthened the outer layers.
In April 2013 the sprays were turned off and controlled air drying began inside a sealed box around the ship, nicknamed the hotbox, held at about 20 degrees and 55 per cent humidity. Over the next three years more than 100 tonnes of water were drawn out of the timbers, while a laser station measured any movement three times a day. By May 2016 the wood was dry enough for the drying ducts to come out. Small air diffusers replaced them, and the hotbox walls came down.
Visiting the Mary Rose Museum
The hull was first shown to the public from October 1983 in a covered dry dock, seen through glass and spray. The present Mary Rose Museum, designed by Wilkinson Eyre with Perkins+Will, was built over the top of that listed dry dock while conservation carried on inside, and opened on 31 May 2013. With the ducts and hotbox gone in 2016, visitors now see the dried hull from galleries on several levels, with the finds displayed alongside it deck by deck.
More than 26,000 artefacts and pieces of timber came out of the wreck, and the museum is the best way to meet the crew. There is the barber-surgeon's chest with its razor handles and a copper syringe, carpenters' tool chests, longbows and arrows, navigation instruments, and the skeleton of the ship's dog, a young terrier cross the researchers named Hatch. For anyone who loves sea music, the most moving case may be the instruments: two fiddles, three pipes, a tabor drum and the only surviving still shawm, a soft-voiced ancestor of the oboe. The crew of a Tudor warship had dance tunes and work rhythms long before anyone wrote down a sea shanty.
The museum stands inside Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, a short walk from Nelson's flagship HMS Victory; the idea of putting the two side by side was first floated in July 1981. The Victorian ironclad HMS Warrior lies at the dockyard gate. The Mary Rose, built in this town and lost within sight of it, is the oldest of the three by more than two centuries.
FAQ
When did the Mary Rose sink?
On 19 July 1545, during the Battle of the Solent against a French invasion fleet. She went down off Spithead, within sight of Portsmouth, and fewer than 35 of her crew survived.
Why did the Mary Rose sink?
Nobody knows for certain. Most accounts say she heeled over in a gust while turning and flooded through her open lower gunports, though one French witness claimed gunfire from the galleys sank her.
When was the Mary Rose raised?
The hull was lifted from the seabed on 11 October 1982 in a steel cradle, after four seasons of diving to excavate and empty it.
Where is the Mary Rose Museum?
Inside Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, built over the dry dock where the hull has been kept since the 1980s. HMS Victory and HMS Warrior are in the same dockyard.
How much of the Mary Rose survives?
Roughly 40 per cent of the hull, mainly the starboard side, which lay buried in the seabed clay. Thousands of objects recovered from the wreck are shown alongside it.