Mary Rose
The Mary Rose was a carrack in the English Tudor navy of King Henry VIII. She was launched in 1511 and served for 34 years in several wars against France, Scotland, and Brittany. After being substantially rebuilt in 1536, she saw her last action on 1545. She led the attack on the galleys of a French invasion fleet, but sank off Spithead in the Solent, the strait north of the Isle of Wight.
The wreck of the Mary Rose was located in 1971 and was raised on 11 October 1982 by the Mary Rose Trust in one of the most complex and expensive maritime salvage projects in history. The surviving section of the ship and thousands of recovered artefacts are of significance as a Tudor period time capsule. The excavation and raising of the Mary Rose was a milestone in the field of maritime archaeology, comparable in complexity and cost to the raising of the 17th-century Swedish warship Vasa in 1961. The Mary Rose site is designated under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 by statutory instrument 1974/55. The wreck is a Protected Wreck managed by Historic England.
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. The remains of the hull have been on display at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard since the mid-1980s while undergoing restoration. An extensive collection of well-preserved artefacts is on display at the Mary Rose Museum, built to display the remains of the ship and her artefacts.
Mary Rose was one of the largest ships in the English navy through more than three decades of intermittent war, and she 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. She was substantially rebuilt in 1536 and was also one of the earliest ships that could fire a broadside, although the line of battle tactics 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 subject to conflicting testimonies and a lack of conclusive evidence.
Historical context
In the late 15th century, England was still reeling from its dynastic wars first with France and then among its ruling families back on home soil. The great victories against France in the Hundred Years' War were in the past; only the small exclave of Calais in northern France remained of the vast continental holdings of the English kings. The War of the Rosesthe civil war between the houses of York and Lancasterhad ended with Henry VII's establishment of the House of Tudor, the new ruling dynasty of England. The ambitious naval policies of Henry V were not continued by his successors, and from 1422 to 1509 only six ships were built for the crown. The marriage alliance between Anne of Brittany and Charles VIII of France in 1491, and his successor Louis XII in 1499, left England with a weakened strategic position on its southern flank. Despite this, Henry VII managed to maintain a comparatively long period of peace and a small but powerful core of a navy.At the onset of the early modern period, the great European powers were France, the Holy Roman Empire and Spain. All three became involved in the War of the League of Cambrai in 1508. The conflict was initially aimed at the Republic of Venice but eventually turned against France. England's close economic relationship with the Low Countries, ruled by the Spanish Habsburgs and any ambition of the young Henry VIII to recover territory in France made Spain the obvious ally. In 1509, six weeks into his reign, Henry married the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon and joined the League, intent on certifying his historical claim as king of both England and France. By 1511 Henry was part of an anti-French alliance that included Ferdinand II of Aragon, Pope Julius II and Holy Roman emperor Maximilian.
The small navy that Henry VIII inherited from his father had only two sizeable ships, the carracks Regent and Sovereign. Just months after his accession, two large ships were ordered: the Mary Rose and the Peter Pomegranate of about 500 and 450 tons respectively. Which king ordered the building of the Mary Rose is unclear; although construction began during Henry VIII's reign, the plans for naval expansion could have been in the making earlier. Henry VIII oversaw the project and he ordered additional large ships to be built, most notably the Henry Grace à Dieu, or Great Harry at more than 1000 tons burthen. By the 1520s the English state had established a de facto permanent "Navy Royal", the organizational ancestor of the modern Royal Navy.
Construction
Construction of Mary Rose began on 29 January 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 that were either painted or gilded.Constructing a warship of the size of the Mary Rose was a major undertaking, requiring vast quantities of high-quality material. For 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. One estimate for the number of trees is around 600 mostly large oaks, representing about 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, and one of the main deck beams would have weighed close to three-quarters of a tonne.
Naming
The common explanation for the ship's name was that it was inspired by Henry VIII's favourite sister, Mary Tudor, Queen of France, and the rose as the emblem of the Tudors. According to the historians David Childs, David Loades and Peter Marsden, no direct evidence of naming the ship after the King's sister exists. It was far more common at the time to give ships pious Christian names, a long-standing tradition in Western Europe, or to associate them with their royal patrons. Names like Grace Dieu and Holighost had been common since the 15th century and other Tudor navy ships had names like the Regent and Three Ostrich Feathers.The Virgin Mary is a more likely candidate for a namesake, and she was also associated with the Rosa Mystica. The name of the sister ship of the Mary Rose, the Peter Pomegranate, is believed to have been named in honour of Saint Peter, and the badge of the Queen Catharine of Aragon, a pomegranate. According to Childs, Loades and Marsden, the two ships, which were built around the same time, were named in honour of the king and queen, respectively.
Design
The Mary Rose was substantially rebuilt in 1536. The 1536 rebuilding turned a ship of 500 tons into one of 700 tons, and added an entire extra tier of broadside guns to the old carrack-style structure. By consequence, modern research is based mostly on interpretations of the concrete physical evidence of this version of the Mary Rose. The construction of the original design from 1509 is less known.The Mary Rose was built according to the carrack-style with high "castles" fore and aft with a low waist of open decking in the middle. The hull has tumblehome: above the waterline, the hull gradually narrows. This makes boarding more difficult and reduces the quantity of heavy structural timbers that carry the higher guns. Modern understanding is that tumblehome does not improve stability by positioning the guns closer to the centreline, though that may have been the belief and intention of her builders.
Since only part of the hull has survived, it is not possible to determine many of the basic dimensions with any great accuracy. The, the widest point of the ship roughly above the waterline, was about and the keel about, although the ship's overall length is uncertain.
The hull had four levels separated by three decks. Because the terminology for these was not yet standardised in the 16th century, the terms used here are those that were applied by the Mary Rose Trust. The hold lay furthest down in the ship, right above the bottom planking and below the waterline. This is where the galley was situated and the food was cooked. Directly aft of the galley was the mast step, a rebate in the centre-most timber of the keelson, right above the keel, which supported the main mast, and next to it the main bilge pump. To increase the stability of the ship, the hold was where the ballast was placed and much of the supplies were kept. Right above the hold was the orlop, the lowest deck. Like the hold, it was partitioned and was also used as a storage area for everything from food to spare sails.
Above the orlop lay the main deck, which housed the heaviest guns. The side of the hull on the main deck level had seven gunports on each side fitted with heavy lids that would have been watertight when closed. This was also the highest deck that was caulked and waterproof. Along the sides of the main deck there were cabins under the forecastle and aftercastle which have been identified as belonging to the carpenter, barber-surgeon, pilot and possibly also the master gunner and some of the officers.
The top deck in the hull structure was the upper deck which was exposed to the elements in the waist. It was a dedicated fighting deck without any known partitions and a mix of heavy and light guns. Over the open waist, the upper deck was entirely covered with a boarding net, a coarse netting that served as a defence measure against boarding. Though very little of the upper deck has survived, it has been suggested that it housed the main living quarters of the crew underneath the aftercastle. A drain located in this area has been identified as a possible "piss-dale", a general urinal to complement the regular toilets which would probably have been located in the bow.
The castles of the Mary Rose had additional decks, but since almost nothing of them survives, their design has had to be reconstructed from historical records. Contemporary ships of equal size were consistently listed as having three decks in both castles. Although speculative, this layout is supported by the illustration in the Anthony Roll and the gun inventories.
During the early stages of excavation of the wreck, it was erroneously believed that the ship had originally been built with clinker planking, a technique in which the hull consisted of overlapping planks that bore the structural strength of the ship. Later examination indicates that the clinker planking was never present throughout the ship; only the outer structure of the sterncastle is built with overlapping planking, though not with a true clinker technique.