The Mary Rose was the prized flagship of King Henry VIII’s navy. She was a carrack-type warship who was in service for 33 years before she sank in action on 19 July 1545.
The Mary Rose would slumber in the deeps of the Solent, the straits north of the Isle of Wight, until she was discovered by archeologists in 1971.
It was salvaged 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 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.
Until archaeologists brought up the Mary Rose, there were no extant examples of the Welsh/English long bow, so the the ship would have been historically valuable for just those weapons alone. When you add to it all the other artefacts found and reconstructed from the ship, as well as the ship itself … the Mary Rose is one of the most priceless historical resources ever discovered.
I visited the Mary Rose two years ago, while on a visit to England. It was an amazing thing to behold!