This is the tragedy of a ship that sank under some mysterious circumstances

Over the centuries there have been many attempts to retrieve the remains and find out exactly what happened. While we do now have the remains, the real story still eludes us.

Mary and Henry

The Mary Rose was a pretty important ship for its time. As Henry VIII’s favourite he made her the flagship of his fleet that he had carefully built up over 30ish years. Henry was an avid shipbuilder, so it probably comes as no surprise that over his reign Henry went from a fleet of 5 to an armada of 58 by his death in 1547. Feeling the pressure against the French and Scottish navies, Henry took great pride in his ‘Army by Sea’.

Built as a carrack warship for the Royal Navy, the Mary Rose had a length of 32 metres, and it may be surprising to learn that the Mary Rose served in several battles before her shock sinking in 1545. Built in 1510 she had a 34-year-long career before the Battle of Solent that saw her ultimate demise. In fact the letter that ordered the construction of

two new ships,

with one of those ships being the Mary Rose, still survives. What’s even better is that the Mary Rose was built in Portsmouth, and then sank in the Solent just off Portsmouth, so the fact that her eventual resting place is the Portsmouth Mary Rose Museum seems to tie it all off with a nice neat bow.

Now a carrack was traditionally a short but not overly fast ship, and it had a fair amount of accommodation built in. Which did mean that while carrack’s were capable of carrying large amounts of cargo, they also had a tendency to be top-heavy, especially with the extra accommodation added on, making this type of ship unwieldy when making sharp turns, keep this mind cause in a little bit it’s going to become very important. The Royal Navy decided that being unable to make super sharp turns wasn’t really something they were too concerned about because the Royal Navy wasn’t going to be sailing off into the distance, at least not at first, and their main use was to protect English shores, so their main function was to look scary, and if having to make wide sweeping turns allowed this, then so be it.

But in 1536, the Mary Rose went through a rebuild. Originally she would have been roughly 500-600 tons in weight, but after the rebuild she’d put on a little bit of extra weight coming in at 800 tons. So we now have a heavy ship with even less ability to make anything resembling a sharp turn.

When she was first built the Mary Rose would have carried a lot of small cannons, which were mainly used to hurt sailors on the enemy vessel. Later on they would use larger cannons that were capable of blasting a hole through a ship and sinking it, these larger cannons were understood to be too heavy to have them sitting up high and unbalancing the ship, so they would be put down in the hulls closer to the waterline, which meant the use of gun ports was needed. Gun ports were essentially little windows in the body of ship that had a shutter that could be closed when the cannons were not actively being used.

So when the Mary Rose went through her refit, she was refitted with 90 larger cannons and gun ports that would have sat about a metre above the waterline, with the smaller cannons up on deck. So at least we now have an idea of where some of the extra weight came from.

Seeing as she was Henry VIII’s favourite, the Mary Rose was pretty famous during her lifetime, and the refit Mary Rose was portrayed on what is known as the Anthony Roll. The Anthony Roll currently lives in the British Library in London, it is three rolls of vellum, and is decorated with illustrations of about 58 English ships, one of them being the Mary Rose. But why is it called the ‘Anthony’ Roll, well that’s probably because it was created by a bloke called Anthony Anthony. Good grief I don’t even want to think about how confusing his life must have been. Anyway Anthony2 did a pretty decent job and must have been pretty proud of his work because he presented the vellum rolls to Henry VIII sometime in the early 1540s. Now not all the drawings are technically accurate, but they do give a nice impression of the magnificence of the fleet, especially what the Mary Rose could have looked like.

So why is the Mary Rose called the Mary Rose? You might think ‘Mary’ as in Mary Tudor, Henry’s favourite sister, and ‘Rose’ as in the Tudor Rose, and while some think it may be as simple as that, there really isn’t any evidence to support it. It could just as well have been named after the Virgin Mary, who supposedly was known through the Tudor period as ‘The Mystic Rose’. Or maybe a little bit of both, get some religion in there and it doesn’t hurt if it signifies the power of the Tudor Dynasty at the same time.

The sinking

It’s no secret that the Mary Rose sank during the Battle of Solent all the way back on the 19th July 1545. There’s a lot going on in the lead up to the Battle of the Solent, and I won’t really go into it, but will just give enough for a bit of context.

So the French and the English were at war between 1542 and 1546, which to be honest, wasn’t all that out of the ordinary, they were forever arguing about something. But for the battle that we’re interested in, we’ll need to know that Francis I, King of France at the time, had sent his navy across the Channel with the aim of attacking the Isle of Wight, which is an island just off the coast of a bigger island that goes by England.

So the French arrive, there’s maybe 100 ships, maybe 200 ships, primary accounts vary, but when the English go out to meet them they realise their severely outnumbered with only 80 ships in the English navy. So the English Navy decide to make a tactical retreat and head on back to Portsmouth, which as we already know is where all the action takes place.

Up until that point it had been a pretty windy day, meaning that the French ships were forced to sit out a little bit, not being really all that threatening, but when the wind drops unexpectedly it gives the French the upper hand and they row four of their best ships into a pretty great position. This swift position-taking surprises the English and the Mary Rose and another ship, the Henry Grâce à Dieu, are forced to face off with the French galleys.

But we know that the Mary Rose is heavy with her extra cannons, so that means that the French have speed on their side as well. And all of a sudden it’s not looking all that great for the English.

And so sitting in the Solent, or the strip of water between the Isle of Wight and the coast of England, and where our Battle gets its name from, we have the Mary Rose and the French facing off. And the Mary Rose is well equipped. She’s got a full flotilla of men and cannon guns, she’s even got the King, Henry VIII, sitting comfortably at Southsea Castle, watching it all unfold and it seems that nothing will get by her.

Then the unthinkable happens.

The Mary Rose tries to turn, but it’s a turn that’s too sharp for her weighed down hull to take, she starts to list to her starboard side. Normally this wouldn’t be too great of an issue, ships lean all the time, but in this instance the gunports added into the side of her hull for the extra heavy cannons, they’ve been left open. Remembering that the gunports are only about a metre above the water line and with the Mary Rose at a serious tilt, water starts gushing in.

With the added weight and the help of the water, the Mary Rose and her crew really stood no chance. In a matter of minutes the Mary Rose will have sunk.

As Henry VIII looks on from Southsea Castle, his beloved ship the Mary Rose falls below the surface taking around 700 crew members with her. Leaving only about 30 men to be rescued.

The fact that 30 were saved at all is a miracle, back in these times, it was rare to find a sailor who knew how to swim, and swimming lessons weren’t particularly high on the extracurriculars for everyone else. So the Mary Rose and her crew sank with the shoreline in view and many on the safety of solid land looking on.

But what’s even worse, was that nets had been placed over the ship’s deck to prevent any of the French boarding the Mary Rose. This net became the death of all those men working within the ship, it trapped them all below deck and sealed their fate.

Now while we have eyewitness accounts that tell us that the Mary Rose seemed to turn and then just kinda sink, the exact cause of the sinking is still a bit of a mystery.

We already know that she was a bit heavy than usual with a crew of 700 and the extra cannons. But there appear to be many theories to explain the demise of the Mary Rose.

The standard accounts seem to say that of her own accord the Mary Rose leaned to one side and before they knew it she was underwater, but it’s more likely that she attempted a sharp turn that made her lean and then sink. But why turn? What was the reason for making such a tight turn when we already know that the Mary Rose wasn’t built for that kind of sailing. She liked slow long meandering turns, not sharp quick ones. Some have put forward that the wind picked up suddenly, effectively pushing the ship to the side that had the gunports open. But I don’t think we’ll ever really know what happened. And it’s more likely that it was a combination of several factors that caused the sinking. And wind does seem to have played a significant factor here, because the Imperial Ambassador at the time, Francois van der Delft, who was there watching the battle take place, wrote a letter to Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, about a week later on the 24th July, and it goes a little something like this:

…Towards the evening the ship [the Mary Rose]…foundered, all the 500 men on board being drowned save about 25 or 30 servants, sailors and the like. Was told by a Fleming amongst the survivors that when she heeled over with the wind the water entered by the lowest row of gun ports which had been left open after firing. They expect to recover the ship and guns…

So it does seem that everything played a factor in the Mary Rose’s demise.

Naturally the French lost no time in trying to take credit for the sinking of the Mary Rose for themselves. The French claimed that they had fired a cannonball which had done the sinking. And while a French cannonball was found among the remains, this has been contested, as the material that made up the cannonball appears to come from Britain and not France.  

And one hole from a canon doesn’t exactly bring down a ship, so again we come back to several things working together.

Another theory suggests that it all could have been lost in translation. A scientific examination of the teeth of about 18 crew members, showed that about 60% of them weren’t English. This could suggest that foreign sailors were on the crew and just didn’t understand the orders given out by the admiral. And the admiral was recorded as saying he had

…the sort of men [that he] could not rule.

So communication issues could be another factor. But then again, foreign sailors weren’t anything out of the ordinary, and out of a crew of 500-700, 18 isn’t exactly the largest sample size.

So it seems that in order for the Mary Rose to sink, a unique combination of circumstances seems to have occurred. And perhaps we’ll never know exactly what happened onboard.

The raising

Getting the Mary Rose into the position she is now, literally took decades and many many archaeologists and specialists to dive to the wreck, unearth her treasures and bring her back up to the surface.

But the recovery project started almost as soon as she sank. Like we heard in the Imperial Ambassador’s letter:

…They expect to recover the ship and guns…

And did they indeed. Because of all the cannons she was carrying, the Mary Rose was a pretty valuable asset, and of course Henry’s favourite, so he was eager to re-float her and have her back out as part of his navy as soon as possible.

And initially, those in the know thought it would be relatively easy to get back up to the surface, such as in this letter by Charles, Duke of Suffolk on the 1st August, only a couple weeks after the sinking:

I trust that by Monday or Tuesday, at the farthest, the Mary Rose shall be weighed up and saved.

Technically the Duke of Suffolk was correct. It was a Monday that the Mary Rose was raised, she just wouldn’t exactly be in a state to sail again and it would be several centuries later that she once again saw the surface.

It was only a couple days after the Mary Rose sank that a Venetian salvage expert was on hand making a plan to raise the ship. Back in the day, the Venetians were considered the experts when it came to shipwreck salvage. So it seemed everyone had full expectations of the Mary Rose being back to sailing the seas in the not too distant future.

Their initial plan was a pretty traditional one. They would run some cables under the ship, and then two larger vessels would pull the cables taut, bringing the Mary Rose up with them. She would then be moved to shallower water where she would be emptied, allowed to float and the damage could be assessed.

While this method may seem a bit medieval, it’s actually still used today. In fact the Vasa, a Swedish wreck, was raised using this very technique. And that cruise ship, the Costa Concordia, that got into some strife several years back, they used this method to get her re-floated as well.

While those on shore had high hopes, the Mary Rose had other ideas. She kinda liked the peace and quiet of being at the bottom of the Solent and decided to stay there a while longer. As the Venetians tried their technique the only thing that came up was the masts that broke in the attempt. But they didn’t give up, they tried for several weeks to refloat the Mary Rose, but as each attempt failed, they eventually left her on the seabed, where she would stay for another 437 years.

Naturally time did its thing. The Mary Rose became submerged by silt protecting part of the ship and degradation and erosion played their part on what was left exposed.

So now let’s fast forward to 1836, the Mary Rose is now almost completely covered by the seabed when two divers, who also happened to be brothers, stumble across some of her beams protruding up out of the silt.

John and Charles Deane set to excavating what they could of the Mary Rose with case iron bombs. Now I don’t have to tell you this isn’t exactly best practice. But they were able to expose a large portion, which allowed the brothers to recover several parts of the ship, including cannons, the base of the main mast and other bits and pieces.

And of course the public were all about the Mary Rose, but not really for the right reasons. Many of the things the brothers found were sold off. But thanks to the hard clay of the seabed the Deane brothers could only extract so much and were eventually forced to abandon their efforts.

After the hype of the Mary Rose died down, she was forgotten about and left alone for another 150 years, until a diver group went exploring in the area in 1965.

Led by Alexander McKee, the Southsea British Sub-Aqua Group team, as part of the Project Solent Ships, a project to investigate wrecks in the Solent, noticed a weird depression in the seabed and a sonar scan in 1967 revealed evidence of solid remains.

Between 1968 and 1971, volunteer divers explored the area, and by using dredges, water jets and airlifts, they were able to excavate several stray pieces of timber. But the real exciting part didn’t happen until 1971, when Percy Ackland found three of the port frames that once made up the Mary Rose.

And so it was in 1971 that proper excavation work began with site surveyors and the whole she-bang. And work did not stop, for ten years over 600 volunteer divers made 28 000 dives down to the Mary Rose in order to recover over 19 000 artefacts.

In 1978, a trench that was dug to see how much of the ship had survived showed two decks were still intact. And this led the team to decide to excavate what remained of the Mary Rose. The next year in 1979, the Mary Rose Trust was formed with the then Prince of Wales, now Charles III as its president. And with the trust, full time employees could be hired to fully excavate the ship.

The way the team worked was ingenious. A salvage vessel, the Sleipnor, was moored just off the wreck site in 1979. And it was this vessel that housed all the staff. For an accelerated timeline, the divers would work in shifts, living on the Sleipnor and then diving when their shift came.

But underwater archaeology is a delicate game. Hands, trowels and airlifts are used to gently encourage silt to move away from the artefacts. In order for divers to know where they were when excavating, a grid made up of bright yellow pipe was put in place. This also helped when recording the artefacts that were recovered.

And then the really exciting bit happened in 1982. The Mary Rose was lifted from the bottom of the Solent. But she would not be like what she was when she sank. While the starboard side had been remarkably preserved thanks to the mud and clay of the Solent seabed, the port side, the side that had been exposed had completely disintegrated.

And so, because of her delicate position, a committee was set up to figure out the best way to bring her back up to the surface in one piece. It was decided that a custom lifting frame would be used. The frame would be attached by steel bolts through the hull at specific points so as to evenly spread the strain on the ship. Hydraulic jacks then helped to raise the hull up out of the clay just a few centimetres so that the suction effect of silt was no longer in play.

Then the hull, that is now hanging from the frame, all still at the bottom of the sea, could now be moved into a steel cradle made specifically for the shape of the Mary Rose. Airbags were attached to the steel frame and it would be the inflation of these airbags that would slowly and surely once again bring the Mary Rose up to the surface and into Portsmouth where she and every piece of the artefacts collected could be stored in an extremely controlled environment to prevent any further degradation and allow conservation to get started.

Now this whole process was very special because it was broadcast live on TV to over 60 million people. The live broadcast went to air on Monday 11th October 1982, so I guess the Imperial Ambassador was right after all.

Now even though the bulk of what survives of the Mary Rose has been taken up out of the water and is now in a museum, it doesn’t mean there isn’t anything left down in the Solent. There are still parts of the Mary Rose down there, not to mention most of the remains of her crew. And so the whole area has been named the Mary Rose Protected Area. Scientific instruments have even been placed down there to help scientists protect the remains for the future.

Long-term conservation

Because half of it is remarkably preserved, the Mary Rose is able to give us a little insight into Tudor times. But the re-exposure to air can harm what we have left of the Mary Rose, so it’s incredibly important to conserve what is left. But nothing like this has really been done before, so these conservation techniques and treatments have to be developed.

From the start, the best archaeological practices were used by those excavating the Mary Rose by using the latest techniques, seeking advice and acquiring the appropriate equipment. And it’s these skills and knowledge that are helping those around the world to achieve similar results.

Something great to come out of the meticulous work on the Mary Rose is what’s been dubbed ‘experimental archaeology’, which is where experts work backwards to find out how things were created like cooking, shipwrightry, and how the guns were created and managed. All of this has been extremely helpful in allowing historians to understand how things were done during Tudor times, which as I’m sure you know didn’t have the kind of technological advancements we enjoy today.

What’s crazy about the Mary Rose is not just that a very significant portion of the ship was raised intact several centuries after it sank, but the scientific advancements that have been made because of it.

And these kind of techniques continue through the Mary Rose Project which is constantly coming up with innovative ways to conserve the archaeological wreck. Which the Mary Rose desperately needs because for over 400 years the clay and silt at the bottom of the Solent did the job of preservative. But now that the ship has been re-exposed to the air, it and almost 19 000 artefacts need proper preservation and so are now on display at the purpose built museum in Portsmouth, which is of course run by the Mary Rose Trust.

Since the moment the Mary Rose was lifted from the seabed, the conservation began.

We know that what remains of the Mary Rose is in a brilliant state. This is mainly because the silt that settled over the ship turned into hard clay protecting the wood from the decaying effects of oxygen. But what’s pretty difficult is that when the wood is first extracted it looks like it’ll be great forever.

We talk about the ship being made of wood but in reality, it is very old wood, that has been marinading in seawater for hundreds of years.

This is because the bacteria has already done its damage, but the water fills up the wood and basically swells it to keep it in its original shape. So when the wood dries out that is when the proper damage becomes visible. Kind of like the same thing that happened when they brought a sample of wood up to the surface at Shi Cheng. So the idea is to keep the wood in the same state it was when sitting on the seabed.

In order to do this, the Mary Rose was placed in a very scientifically controlled dry dock where it was forced to endure a continuous chemical spray that kept the wood swollen and in its original state. And the chemical spray continued even when the ship was first put on public display in 1983. This step was known as ‘passive storage’, a stage that would stop any active deterioration that is the result of being brought to the surface while they worked out how to actively conserve the wood.

What might surprise you though, is that it wasn’t just the wood that was kept as close to their submerged state as possible. The artefacts made from iron, copper and alloys also needed to be kept in their underwater state in order to prevent any oxidisation that could turn into the pretty serious condition of rust.

But what is this chemical spray that they used? Well that would be Polyethylene glycol, or PEG for those who struggle to pronounce chemical names. PEG was used because the solution was able to move into the areas of the wood that the bacteria had decayed and replace the water that had held the wood in its shape when it was underwater. Here’s Dr Eleanor Schofield, who is the Head of Conservation and Collections Care at The Mary Rose Trust in Portsmouth, telling us why it’s important to replace the water with the PEG:

Whilst the structure can look quite intact, there is actually a considerable amount of wood matter that has been lost, and when it was excavated it was essentially being held up by water. If you simply dried it, it would shrink and basically collapse. So, you must replace that water with PEG.

What’s pretty crazy about this, is they sprayed the Mary Rose with different stages of the PEG solution for a good 19 years, continuously. During this whole time the public could view the ship, but because it’s a liquid being sprayed with windows, your view of the Mary Rose was kinda through a veil of permanent mist.

And then finally, the Mary Rose was ready to be dried out. But this had to be done very carefully. So carefully that it took several years for the ship to be monitored as it dried extremely slowly. Here’s Dr Schofield telling us how it works:

After being sprayed for many years with PEG we started drying it out… There’s always some movement associated with drying so we need to monitor that constantly… [We] monitor the movement from laser scans, to see how it correlates with the drying process.

The real issue with the drying process is that wood doesn’t dry all at the same pace. Some parts dry quicker, and other parts dry slower. Which is mainly down to when they were submerged, not all parts would have been covered by the silt the whole time the ship was down there. Ideally the best results would come from the wood drying all at the same rate, but in reality that just isn’t realistic, so measures such as the laser scans had to be used. The laser scan data could then be used to modify the air flow controlling the temperature, humidity and velocity of the flow of air that surround the ship in an effort to change the speed of the wood drying in different areas.

When those conserving the Mary Rose were confident that the majority of the water had been replaced with the PEG solution, a major milestone in the conservation process was reached, but it is far from the end.

Even though the wood itself is in a terrific condition, it will always require constant care and attention. The issue with the Mary Rose is now trying to understand how the PEG solution and therefore the treated wood change over time, especially under changing conditions, such as lighting. It’s very important for the amount of light to be kept at a minimum. Any UV and even visible light produce energy that can change the chemical state of many materials, potentially damaging them forever. So, of course, the ship is constantly monitored and continuous research continues to understand what changes may be taking place.

But all this conservation learning doesn’t just benefit the Mary Rose. The Mary Rose Trust makes sure to support a whole range of research projects that can further understanding of underwater archaeology and the conservation of underwater artefacts.

What we know

We don’t know everything about the people who worked on the Mary Rose, but what we do know has come from what has been found at the wreck site. Luckily for us here in the future, a lot of people liked to write about and even draw the Mary Rose, so we have a pretty good idea what she looked like, and it probably didn’t hurt that she was Henry VIII’s favourite.

Archaeologists were also able to recover a whole heap of the cannons and could see the Tudor touches that were added like Tudor rose and lion head decorations.

The amount of things recovered from the wreck are way too long to list here, but trust me there’s a lot of it. In fact you can even get an idea over on The Mary Rose Trust website.

But what’s really interesting is what these items and objects found can tell us about those who lived onboard. And the fact that they’re personal items, they can really tell us a lot. There’s wooden combs, drums, bone dice, leather book covers, board games, gold coins and musical pipes. The representation of these items does remind us that the wreck site of the Mary Rose is a real grave site.

200 skeletons have been discovered throughout the excavation, bits of clothing like hats and shoes were even found. But these skeletons and clothing items can tell us a lot about the crew members specifically. We can find out what they ate, if they had any diseases or injuries and where they came from before they found themselves on the fateful Mary Rose.

What’s even more impressive is that through what’s been recovered, historians and archaeologists can piece together what the life of those sailors was like. Similar to Pompeii, the Mary Rose gives us a sneak peek into a particular period of time, but instead of a Roman village, we have a glance back to Tudor times.

We can see the style of shoe that the sailors preferred, that they relaxed with music, games and books, and that musical instruments were common.

But what’s pretty important about the Mary Rose, is that while we don’t know much about specific individuals, the crew of the Mary Rose all died at the same time, meaning that we have a pretty great cross section of a community frozen in time, allowing for extensive study into age ranges, health statuses and professions. Not to mention the insight this provides to the typical English sailor.

How to see the ship

Now how do you get around to see this marvellous piece of history. Well lucky for you the Mary Rose has her very own museum right there at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyards. As the only ship of her kind on display anywhere in the world, it should be a terrific day out.

What’s even better is that in 2016 the museum went through a complete state-of-the-art refurbishment. The £5.4 million museum revamp means that when you visit, you can get a full, uninterrupted view of the slowly drying Mary Rose.

You can see the ship through full floor-to-ceiling windows that allow you to see the multiple levels of the Mary Rose in all their glory.

Here’s Dr Alex Hildred, who is Head of Research and Curator of Ordnance, and among those who dived on the wreck back in the 70s and 80s telling us about the new viewing visibility:

When we excavated the Mary Rose we wanted people to see even a little of what we, as archaeologists, saw and experienced underwater. The fact that you can see it from three different angles that you’ve never been able to see before, except for when she first came up, is brilliant.

But what’s even better is the Mary Rose Museum doesn’t just show the remains of the ship. The Museum also tells the stories of the men who lived, worked and died on-board.

You’ve got the remains of the Mary Rose on one side and on the other a selection of the 19 000 artefacts recovered on display, providing the visitor with a view into the past of these sailors’ lives.

The technology being used to bring the past to life is pretty amazing. Such as the ‘Many Faces of the Mary Rose’ exhibit. Where some of the men’s faces have been reconstructed and displayed to the public for the first time. The exhibit really displays the diversity of the men who worked aboard the Mary Rose, and perhaps a representation of the wider Tudor England society.

The Mary Rose Museum allows you to visit Tudor life through the use of fully interactive displays to discover what it was really like on-board. They even have 3D models of the objects using some pretty cool photogrammetry techniques. You can also visit the Mary Rose virtually.

‘Experience 1545’ allows the visitors to relive the final moments on board the Mary Rose. The exhibit is a walkthrough experience where you’re taken through the history of the ship, starting with the construction and ending with her sudden sinking. You even get greeted with a life-sized projection of the main man himself, Henry VIII. What could be better than that? Maybe a simulated battle scene? That’s in there too.

A new immersive experience has been developed with the help of the Centre for Creative and Immersive Extended Reality where you get to experience the structure of the ship and the wreck site all through augmented reality. This technology really opens up new ways of seeing and interacting with the Mary Rose for visitors. Using all sorts of 3D scanning technology, it’s as if you’re right there in the same space as the Mary Rose and her wreck.

And coming in 2023, a new exhibit is being created that takes you right down to the wreck site with an experienced diver leading you throughout the wreck. It’s ensured to be incredibly authentic and realistic so keep your eyes out for it if you’re in the area.

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