The Tudor warship, Mary Rose, is one of the most famous ships of the early modern period, thanks entirely to her unfortunate loss during the Battle of the Solent in July 1545 and her rediscovery and salvage in the late 20th century. Her preserved remains can be viewed at the Mary Rose Museum at the National Maritime Museum in Portsmouth, UK.
The Mary Rose was laid down as a carrack warship in 1510 and launched in July 1511. For her time, she was an extremely large ship at 500 tons. Over 600 trees were reputed to be used in her construction. She was initially armed with a single row of bronze cannon of various calibers and was without the distinctive high fo'castle and aftercastles. In her original format she fought in campaigns against the French from 1512 to 1518, then again in the Second French War from 1521-1526.
In 1525 the ship was placed in reserve and in 1536 was 'made new' in a substantial reconstruction involving the addition of a second gun deck and increasing the height of the fore and aft castles. The castles were highly decorated with paint and carvings and mounted numerous small cannons. This reflected the nature of fighting at sea at the time. The large cannon on the lower decks were slow to reload and fire, as well as being generally inaccurate. After one or two salvos at distances of up to 200 metres or so, ships would close with other and the crews would battle it out with personal weapons. Consequently, ships with high castles fore and aft held an advantage of being able to fire down into the masses of soldiers and crews on their opponents decks. However, this also made these ships unwieldy to maneuver and unstable in rough weather.
In 1545, in response to the Henry the Eighth's marital troubles, a coalition of European powers went to war with England. The French raised an army and fleet and attempted an invasion across the channel. The English fleet attempted to attach the French fleet massing Le Harve in a preemptive attack, but the attack failed and the English fleet returned to their base in the Solent. The French fleet arrived at the mouth of the Solent on 16th July 1545 trapping the English fleet within the harbour. Here, the French fleet, whose fighting ships were primarily oar-powered galleys, had an advantage over the English fleet, which were predominately sail-powered galleons.
On the 19th July 1545 the English fleet found itself becalmed in the harbour. The French sent their galleys against the fleet. A fierce battle ensued between the French galleys and English 'row barges.' Despite losses, the English managed to slow the French advance until a wind began to pick up. The two largest galleons, the Henry Grace a Dieu and Mary Rose led the advance on the French galleys. As the Mary Rose drew close to the French galleys she turned and fired a broadside, then as she turned about to present her second broadside, she was caught by a gust of wind and heeled over. Water flooded through her open gun-ports and the ship rolled over and sank. Only 35 of her crew of 400 escaped the ship. This was due both to the speed with which the ship went down and the fact the decks had been hung with anti-boarding netting. The netting was intended to make it difficult for boarders to clamber aboard the ship, but in this case it trapped the crew within their sinking ship.
Despite the loss of the Mary Rose, the battle was ultimately inconclusive and the French eventually withdrew and returned to France. There were recriminations against the crew for the loss of the ship with blame being assigned to the gunners for failing to close the cannon ports when the ship turned. As the ship had been lost relatively close to shore, it was expected that the ship would be raised and a specialist Venetian salvage team were hired. Their plan was to run cables through the lower gunports in the ship's hull and attach them to two hulks at low tide. As the high time came in, the Mary Rose would then be lifted from seabed and slowly dragged to shore. However, when the first attempt was made in August 1545 it was found that the ship was lying on its side and stuck fast into the mud. There was no way for the salvors to run cables under the hull so the cables were tied to the masts in an attempt to right the ship, but this only resulted in the masts being snapped from the hull. In the end, the masts, rigging and a small number of cannon were salvaged. Over the next decade or so attempts were made to salvage the cannons and other items from the wreck.
The wreck was discovered again in the 19th century and more artefacts were salvaged. In 1970, the wreck was rediscovered after a five year search and plans were put in train to salvage the wreck. Prince Charles was one of the project's patrons. After several years of excavating arefacts from the wreck in-situ, it was recognised that these excavations were damaging the wreck, so plans began to raise what remained of the ship. As the Mary Rose's hull had collapsed over the centuries, it could not be raised whole, therefore a large metal cradle was constructed around the wreck so that it could be lifted from the seabed. On 11 October 1982, the Mary Rose saw daylight for the first time in 437 years.
Preservation of the ship's waterlogged timbers required special treatment to prevent them drying out and rotting so a very art-deco museum and preservation centre was built to house the wreck and its artefacts in the lee of HMS Victory.
A model of the Mary Rose at the time of her loss.
The Mary Rose had laid on her starboard side, deep in the mud. The port side of the ship had subsequently rotted and collapsed over time. Within the museum, the ship's starboard side has been braced and set upright within an airtight room that is constantly misted and flushed with fresh water to remove mud and salts from the wood.
From the observation decks looking onto the wreck, you can effectively view into what would have been the rear half of the ship. I must admit that after having seen the amazing Swedish warship, the Vasa, several times I had never been that interested the Mary Rose wreck as I believed there would be little to see. However really surprised and impressed with the scale of the remains and the way they have been presnted. There is much more of the wreck than the photos of the salvage would suggest.
It wasn't only the sailors who went down with the ship. The ship's dog also shared their watery grave.
The ships oven. Fire was always a risk on wooden ships so the ships kitchen had a carefully built brick oven.
The kettle drum stove
The officers silverware
An officer's chest
The cannons were a mix of 'modern' muzzle-loading bronze cannon on naval carriages and older breech-loading iron cannon on heavy and largely immobile carriages.
An older-style iron cannon and stone shot
The ship's carpenter's tools
Personal possessions including books, hats, shoes, pipes were well preserved in the mud.
I had not expected much from the Mary Rose museum as the salvaged wreckage seemed rather meager to me. Instead, I was really impressed by the amount of artifacts, the quality of the display and the scale of the ship's remains. The surviving starboard side is actually quite huge and even though it is still undergoing preservation, it is really well displayed. I highly recommend the museum for anyone interested in maritime history. https://maryrose.org/
Do check out the Vasa museum in Sweden:
https://militarymuseum.blogspot.com/2022/01/royal-ship-vasa-1626-stockholm-sweden.html
No comments:
Post a Comment