MARY ROSE , DROWNED 1545 JULY 19 AND
WAS RAISED 1982 FROM SEA
The Mary Rose is a carrack-type warship of the English Tudor navy of King Henry VIII. After serving for 33 years in several wars against France, Scotland, and Brittany and after being substantially rebuilt in 1536, she saw her last action on 19 July 1545. While leading the attack on the galleys of a French invasion fleet, she sank in the Solent, the straits north of the Isle of Wight.
The remnants of the Mary Rose undergoing conservation in Portsmouth
| |
| History | |
|---|---|
 England | |
| Name: | Mary Rose |
| Laid down: | 1510 |
| Launched: | July 1511 |
| Completed: | 1512 |
| Homeport: | Portsmouth, England |
| Fate: | Sank in battle in 1545, raised in 1982 |
| Status: | Museum ship |
| General characteristics | |
| Tons burthen: | 500 (700–800 after 1536) |
| Propulsion: | Sail |
| Complement: | 200 sailors, 185 soldiers, and 30 gunners |
| Armament: | 78–91 guns (including anti-personnel weapons) |
The wreck of the Mary Rose was rediscovered in 1971. It was raised in 1982 by the Mary Rose Trust, in one of the most complex and expensive projects in the history of maritime archaeology. The surviving section of the ship and thousands of recovered artefacts are of immeasurable value as a Tudor-era time capsule. The excavation and raising of the Mary Rose was a milestone in the field of maritime archaeology, comparable in complexity and cost only to the raising of the Swedish 17th-century warship Vasa in 1961.
The finds include weapons, sailing equipment, naval supplies and a wide array of objects used by the crew. Many of the artefacts are unique to the Mary Rose and have provided insights into topics ranging from naval warfare to the history of musical instruments. Since the mid-1980s, while undergoing conservation, the remains of the hull have been on display at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. An extensive collection of well-preserved artefacts is on display at the nearby Mary Rose Museum, built to display the reconstructed ship and its artefacts.
The Mary Rose was one of the largest ships in the English navy through more than three decades of intermittent war and was one of the earliest examples of a purpose-built sailing warship. She was armed with new types of heavy guns that could fire through the recently invented gun-ports. After being substantially rebuilt in 1536, she was also one of the earliest ships that could fire a broadside, although the line of battle tactics that employed it had not yet been developed. Several theories have sought to explain the demise of the Mary Rose, based on historical records, knowledge of 16th-century shipbuilding, and modern experiments. The precise cause of her sinking is still unclear, because of conflicting testimonies and a lack of conclusive physical evidence.
Construction[edit]
The construction of the Mary Rose began in 1510 in Portsmouth and she was launched in July 1511. She was then towed to London and fitted with rigging and decking, and supplied with armaments. Other than the structural details needed to sail, stock and arm the Mary Rose, she was also equipped with flags, banners and streamers (extremely elongated flags that were flown from the top of the masts) that were either painted or gilded.[5]
Constructing a warship of the size of the Mary Rose was a major undertaking, requiring vast quantities of high-quality material. In the case of building a state-of-the-art warship, these materials were primarily oak. The total amount of timber needed for the construction can only be roughly calculated since only about one third of the ship still exists.[6] One estimate for the number of trees is around 600 mostly large oaks, representing about 16 hectares (40 acres) of woodland. The huge trees that had been common in Europe and the British Isles in previous centuries were by the 16th century quite rare, which meant that timbers were brought in from all over southern England. The largest timbers used in the construction were of roughly the same size as those used in the roofs of the largest cathedrals in the high Middle Ages. An unworked hull plank would have weighed over 300 kg (660 lb), and one of the main deck beams would have weighed close to three-quarters of a tonne.[7]
First French war[edit]
The Mary Rose first saw battle in 1512, in a joint naval operation with the Spanish against the French. The English were to meet the French and Breton fleets in the English Channel while the Spanish attacked them in the Bay of Biscay and then attack Gascony. The 35-year-old Sir Edward Howard was appointed Lord High Admiral in April and chose the Mary Rose as his flagship. His first mission was to clear the seas of French naval forces between England to the northern coast of Spain to allow for the landing of supporting troops near the French border at Fuenterrabia. The fleet consisted of 18 ships, among them the large ships the Regent and the Peter Pomegranate, carrying over 5,000 men. Howard's expedition led to the capture of twelve Breton ships and a four-day raiding tour of Brittany where English forces successfully fought against local forces and burned numerous settlements.[52]
The fleet returned to Southampton in June where it was visited by King Henry. In August the fleet sailed for Brest where it encountered a joint, but ill-coordinated, French-Breton fleet at the battle of St. Mathieu. The English with one of the great ships in the lead (according to Marsden the Mary Rose) battered the French ships with heavy gunfire and forced them to retreat. The Breton flagship Cordelière put up a fight and was boarded by the 1,000-ton Regent. By accident or through the unwillingness of the Breton crew to surrender, the powder magazine of the Cordelière caught fire and blew up in a violent explosion, setting fire to the Regent and eventually sinking her. About 180 English crew members saved themselves by throwing themselves into the sea and only a handful of Bretons survived, only to be captured. The captain of the Regent, 600 soldiers and sailors, the High Admiral of France and the steward of the town of Morlaix were killed in the incident, making it the focal point of several contemporary chronicles and reports.[53] On 11 August, the English burnt 27 French ships, captured another five and landed forces near Brest to raid and take prisoners, but storms forced the fleet back to Dartmouth in Devon and then to Southampton for repairs.[54]
In the spring of 1513, the Mary Rose was once more chosen by Howard as the flagship for an expedition against the French. Before seeing action, she took part in a race against other ships where she was deemed to be one of the most nimble and the fastest of the great ships in the fleet (see details under "Sails and rigging"). On 11 April, Howard's force arrived off Brest only to see a small enemy force join with the larger force in the safety of Brest harbour and its fortifications.[55] The French had recently been reinforced by a force of galleys from the Mediterranean, which sank one English ship and seriously damaged another. Howard landed forces near Brest, but made no headway against the town and was by now getting low on supplies. Attempting to force a victory, he took a small force of small oared vessels on a daring frontal attack on the French galleys on 25 April. Howard himself managed to reach the ship of French admiral, Prégent de Bidoux, and led a small party to board it. The French fought back fiercely and cut the cables that attached the two ships, separating Howard from his men. It left him at the mercy of the soldiers aboard the galley, who instantly killed him.[56]
Demoralised by the loss of its admiral and seriously short of food, the fleet returned to Plymouth. Thomas Howard, elder brother of Edward, was assigned the new Lord Admiral, and was set to the task of arranging another attack on Brittany. The fleet was not able to mount the planned attack because of adverse winds and great difficulties in supplying the ships adequately and the Mary Rose took up winter quarters in Southampton. In August the Scots joined France in war against England, but were dealt a crushing defeat at the Battle of Flodden on 9 September 1513. A follow-up attack in early 1514 was supported by a naval force that included the Mary Rose, but without any known engagements.[57] The French and English mounted raids on each other throughout that summer, but achieved little, and both sides were by then exhausted. By autumn the war was over and a peace treaty was sealed by the marriage of Henry's sister, Mary, to French king Louis XII.[58]
After the peace Mary Rose was placed in the reserves, "in ordinary". She was laid up for maintenance along with her sister ship the Peter Pomegranate in July 1514. In 1518 she received a routine repair and caulking, waterproofing with tar and oakum (old rope fibres) and was then assigned a small skeleton crew who lived on board the ship until 1522. She served briefly on a mission with other warships to "scour the seas" in preparation for Henry VIII's journey across the Channel to the summit with the French king Francis I at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in June 1520.[59]
Second French war[edit]
In 1522, England was once again at war with France because of a treaty with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. The plan was for an attack on two fronts with an English thrust in northern France. The Mary Rose participated in the escort transport of troops in June 1522, and by 1 July the Breton port of Morlaix was captured. The fleet sailed home and the Mary Rose berthed for the winter in Dartmouth.[60] The war raged on until 1525 and saw the Scots join the French side. Though Charles Brandon came close to capturing Paris in 1523, there was little gained either against France or Scotland throughout the war. With the defeat of the French army and capture of Francis I by Charles V's forces at the Battle of Pavia on 24 February 1525, the war was effectively over without any major gains or major victories for the English side.[61]
Third French war[edit]
Henry's complicated marital situation and his high-handed dissolution of the monasteries angered the Pope and Catholic rulers throughout Europe, which increased England's diplomatic isolation. In 1544 Henry had agreed to attack France together with Emperor Charles V, and English forces captured Boulogne at great cost in September, but soon England was left in the lurch after Charles had achieved his objectives and brokered a separate peace.[64]
In May 1545, the French had assembled a large fleet in the estuary of the Seine with the intent to land troops on English soil. The estimates of the size of the fleet varied considerably; between 123 and 300 vessels according to French sources; and up to 226 sailing ships and galleys according to the chronicler Edward Hall. In addition to the massive fleet, 50,000 troops were assembled at Havre de Grâce (modern-day Le Havre). An English force of 160 ships and 12,000 troops under Viscount Lisle was ready at Portsmouth by early June, before the French were ready to set sail, and an ineffective pre-emptive strike was made in the middle of the month. In early July the huge French force under the command of Admiral Claude d'Annebault set sail for England and entered the Solent unopposed with 128 ships on 16 July. The English had around 80 ships with which to oppose the French, including the flagship Mary Rose. But since they had virtually no heavy galleys, the vessels that were at their best in sheltered waters like the Solent, the English fleet promptly retreated into Portsmouth harbour.[65
Battle of the Solent[edit]
The English were becalmed in port and unable to manoeuvre. On 19 July 1545, the French galleys advanced on the immobilised English fleet, and initially threatened to destroy a force of 13 small galleys, or "rowbarges", the only ships that were able to move against them without a wind. The wind picked up and the sailing ships were able to go on the offensive before the oared vessels were overwhelmed.[66] Two of the largest ships, the Henry Grace à Dieu and the Mary Rose, led the attack on the French galleys in the Solent.
Early in the battle something went wrong. While engaging the French galleys the Mary Rose suddenly heeled (leaned) heavily over to her starboard (right) side and water rushed in through the open gunports.[67] The crew was powerless to correct the sudden imbalance, and could only scramble for the safety of the upper deck as the ship began to sink rapidly. As she leaned over, equipment, ammunition, supplies and storage containers shifted and came loose, adding to the general chaos. The massive port side brick oven in the galley collapsed completely and the huge 360-litre (90 gallon) copper cauldron was thrown onto the orlop deck above.[68] Heavy guns came free and slammed into the opposite side, impeding escape or crushing men beneath them.
For those who were not injured or killed outright by moving objects, there was little time to reach safety, especially for the men who were manning the guns on the main deck or fetching ammunition and supplies in the hold. The companionways that connected the decks with one another would have become bottlenecks for fleeing men, something indicated by the positioning of many of the skeletons recovered from the wreck. What turned the sinking into a major tragedy in terms of lives lost was the anti-boarding netting that covered the upper decks in the waist (the midsection of the ship) and the sterncastle. With the exception of the men who were stationed in the tops in the masts, most of those who managed to get up from below deck were trapped under the netting; they would have been in view of the surface, and their colleagues above, but with little or no chance to break through, and were dragged down with the ship. Out of a crew of at least 400, fewer than 35 escaped, a catastrophic casualty rate of over 90%
Causes of sinking[edit]
Contemporary accounts[edit]
Several accounts of the sinking have been preserved that describe the incident, but the only confirmed eyewitness account is the testimony of a surviving Flemish crewman written down by the Holy Roman Emperor's ambassador François van der Delft in a letter dated 24 July. According to the unnamed Fleming, the ship had fired all of its guns of one side and was turning to present the guns on the other side to the enemy ship, when she was caught in a strong gust of wind, heeled and took in water through the open gunports.[71] In a letter to William Paget dated 23 July, former Lord High Admiral John Russel claimed that the ship had been lost because of "rechenes and great negligence".[72] Three years after the sinking, the Hall's Chronicle gave the reason for the sinking as being caused by "to[o] much foly ... for she was laden with much ordinaunce, and the portes left open, which were low, & the great ordinaunce unbreached, so that when the ship should turne, the water entered, and sodainly she sanke."[73]
Later accounts repeat the explanation that the ship heeled over while going about and that the ship was brought down because of the open gunports. A biography of Peter Carew, brother of George Carew, written by John Hooker sometime after 1575, gives the same reason for the sinking, but adds that insubordination among the crew was to blame. The biography claims that George Carew noted that the Mary Roseshowed signs of instability as soon as her sails were raised. George's uncle Gawen Carew had passed by with his own ship the Matthew Gonson during the battle to inquire about the situation of his nephew's ship. In reply he was told "that he had a sorte of knaves whom he could not rule".[74] Contrary to all other accounts, Martin du Bellay, a French cavalry officer who was present at the battle, stated that the Mary Rose had been sunk by French guns.[75]
Modern rediscovery[edit]
The modern search for the Mary Rose was initiated by the Southsea branch of the British Sub-Aqua Club in 1965 as part of a project to locate shipwrecks in the Solent. The project was under the leadership of historian, journalist and amateur diver Alexander McKee. Another group led by Lieutenant-Commander Alan Bax of the Royal Navy, sponsored by the Committee for Nautical Archaeology in London, also formed a search team. Initially the two teams had differing views on where to find the wreck, but eventually joined forces. In February 1966 a chart from 1841 was found that marked the positions of the Mary Rose and several other wrecks. The charted position coincided with a trench (one of the scour pits) that had already been located by McKee's team, and a definite location was finally established at a position 3 km (1.9 mi) south of the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour(50°46′0″N 1°06′0″W) in water with a depth of 11 m (36 feet) at low tide.[96] Diving on the site began in 1966 and a sonar scan by Harold Edgerton in 1967–68 revealed some type of buried feature. In 1970 a loose timber was located and on 5 May 1971, the first structural details of the buried hull were identified after they were partially uncovered by winter storms.[97]
A major problem for the team from the start was that wreck sites in the UK lacked any legal protection from plunderers and treasure hunters. Sunken ships, once being moving objects, were legally treated as chattel and were awarded to those who could first raise them. The Merchant Shipping Act of 1894 also stipulated that any objects raised from a wreck should be auctioned off to finance the salvage operations, and there was nothing preventing anyone from "stealing" the wreck and making a profit. The problem was handled by forming an organisation, the Mary Rose Committee, aiming "to find, excavate, raise and preserve for all time such remains of the ship Mary Rose as may be of historical or archaeological interest".[98]
To keep intruders at bay, the Committee arranged a lease of the seabed where the wreck lay from the Portsmouth authorities, thereby discouraging anyone from trespassing on the underwater property. In hindsight this was only a legalistic charade which had little chance of holding up in a court of law. In combination with secrecy as to the exact location of the wreck, it saved the project from interference. It was not until the passing of the Protection of Wrecks Act on 5 February 1973 that the Mary Rose was declared to be of national historic interest that enjoyed full legal protection from any disturbance by commercial salvage teams. Despite this, years after the passing of the 1973 act and the excavation of the ship, lingering conflicts with salvage legislation remained a threat to the Mary Rose project as "personal" finds such as chests, clothing and cooking utensils risked being confiscated and auctioned off.[99]
Raising the Ship[edit]
Raising the Mary Rose meant overcoming a number of delicate problems that had never been encountered before. The raising of the Swedish warship Vasa 1959–61 was the only comparable precedent, but it had been a relatively straightforward operation since the hull was completely intact and rested upright on the seabed. It had been raised with basically the same methods as were in use in Tudor England: cables were slung under the hull and attached to two pontoons on either side of the ship which was then gradually raised and towed into shallower waters. Only one third of the Mary Rose was intact and she lay deeply embedded in mud. If the hull were raised in the traditional way, there was no guarantee that it would have enough structural strength to hold together out of water. Many suggestions for raising the ship were discarded, including the construction of a cofferdam around the wreck site, filling the ship with small buoyant objects (such as ping pong balls) or even pumping brine into the seabed and freezing it so that it would float and take the hull with it. After lengthy discussions it was decided in February 1980 that the hull would first be emptied of all its contents and strengthened with steel braces and frames. It would then be lifted to the surface with floating sheerlegs attached to nylon strops passing under the hull and transferred to a cradle. It was also decided that the ship would be recovered before the end of the diving season in 1982. If the wreck stayed uncovered any longer it risked irreversible damage from biological decay and tidal scouring.[107]
During the last year of the operation, the massive scope of full excavation and raising was beginning to take its toll on those closely involved in the project. In May 1981, Alexander McKee voiced concerns about the method chosen for raising the timbers and openly questioned Margaret Rule's position as excavation leader. McKee felt ignored in what he viewed as a project where he had always played a central role, both as the initiator of the search for the Mary Rose and other ships in the Solent, and as an active member throughout the diving operations. He had several supporters who all pointed to the risk of the project's turning into an embarrassing failure if the ship were damaged during raising operations. To address these concerns it was suggested that the hull should be placed on top of a supporting steel cradle underwater. This would avoid the inherent risks of damaging the wooden structure if it were lifted out of the water without appropriate support. The idea of using nylon strops was also discarded in favour of drilling holes through the hull at 170 points and passing iron bolts through them to allow the attachment of wires connected to a lifting frame.[108]
In the spring of 1982, after three intense seasons of archaeological underwater work, preparations began for raising the ship. The operation soon ran into problems: early on there were difficulties with the custom-made lifting equipment; divers on the project belonging to the Royal Engineers had to be pulled because of the outbreak of the Falklands War; and the method of lifting the hull had to be considerably altered as late as June. After the frame was properly attached to the hull it was slowly jacked up on four legs straddling the wreck site to pull the ship off the seabed. The massive crane of the barge Tog Mor was then used to lift the frame and hull on to the specially designed cradle which was padded with water-filled bags. On the morning of 11 October 1982, the final lift of the entire package of cradle, hull and lifting frame began. At 9:03 the first timbers of the Mary Rose broke the surface in the presence of the team, Prince Charles and curious spectators on boats circling the site. A second set of bags under the hull was inflated with air to cushion the waterlogged wood and finally the whole package was transferred to the barge that would take the hull ashore. Though eventually successful, the operation was close to floundering on two occasions; first when one of the supporting legs of the lifting frame was bent and had to be removed and later when a corner of the frame, with "an unforgettable crunch",[109] slipped more than a metre (3 feet) and came close to crushing part of the hull.[110]
Conservation[edit]
Preservation of the Mary Rose and her contents was an essential part of the project from the start. Though many artefacts, especially those that were buried in silt, had been preserved, the long exposure to an underwater environment had rendered most of them sensitive to exposure to air after recovery. Archaeologists and conservators had to work in tandem from the start to prevent deterioration of the artefacts.[133] After recovery, finds were placed in so-called passive storage, which would prevent any immediate deterioration before the active conservation which would allow them to be stored in an open-air environment. Passive storage depended on the type of material that the object was made of, and could vary considerably. Smaller objects from the most common material, wood, were sealed in polyethylene bags to preserve moisture. Timbers and other objects that were too large to be wrapped were stored in unsealed water tanks. Growth of fungi and microbes that could degrade wood were controlled by various techniques, including low-temperature storage, chemicals, and in the case of large objects, common pond snails that consumed wood-degrading organisms but not the wood itself.[134]
Other organic materials such as leather, skin and textiles were treated similarly, by keeping them moist in tanks or sealed plastic containers. Bone and ivory was desalinated to prevent damage from salt crystallisation, as was glass, ceramic and stone. Iron, copper and copper alloy objects were kept moist in a sodium sesquicarbonate solution to prevent oxidisation and reaction with the chlorides that had penetrated the surface. Alloys of lead and pewter are inherently stable in the atmosphere and generally require no special treatment. Silver and gold were the only materials that required no special passive storage.[135]
Conserving the hull of the Mary Rose was the most complicated and expensive task for the project. In 2002 a donation of £4.8 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund and equivalent monetary support from the Portsmouth City and Hampshire County Councils was needed to keep the work with conservation on schedule.[136] During passive conservation, the ship structure could for practical reasons not be completely sealed, so instead it was regularly sprayed with filtered, recycled water that was kept at a temperature of 2 to 5 °C (35 to 41 °F) to keep it from drying out.[137] Drying waterlogged wood that has been submerged for several centuries without appropriate conservation causes considerable shrinkage (20–50%) and leads to severe warping and cracking as water evaporates from the cellular structure of the wood. The substance polyethylene glycol (PEG) had been used before on archaeological wood, and was during the 1980s being used to conserve the Vasa. After almost ten years of small-scale trials on timbers, an active three-phase conservation programme of the hull of the Mary Rosebegan in 1994. During the first phase, which lasted from 1994 to 2003, the wood was sprayed with low-molecular-weight PEG to replace the water in the cellular structure of the wood. From 2003 to 2010, a higher-molecular-weight PEG was used to strengthen the mechanical properties of the outer surface layers. The third phase consisted of a controlled air drying ending in 2016.[138]
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