Page 38

The Mary Rose Museum reopened this summer after the fi nal stage of a £39m project. We discover how the latest technology helps to bring the history of this Tudor warship to lifeThe year 2016 has been momentous. With ground-breaking political and sporting events unfolding in rapid succession, it took something very special on the cultural scene to make headlines this summer. The re-opening of the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard on July 19 was such an event. Indeed, it was so signifi cant that it featured on national and international media channels and trended as Number Two topic on Twitter social media for two consecutive days.King Henry VIII’s favourite warship has always been news. Commissioned in 1509 and launched in 1511 as an innovative purpose-built warship, the Mary Rose must have been the talk of the king’s “army by sea”. In a letter to Henry VIII in 1513, Admiral Sir Edward Howard described the Mary Rose as “the noblest shipp of sayle [of any] gret ship, at this howr, that I trow be in Cristendom.”The dramatic sinking of the Mary Rose in the Battle of the Solent on July 19, 1545 has ensured her place in English history. The exact reasons for the disaster remain a matter of lively debate. What is beyond question is that the surviving hull and the extraordinary collection of many thousands of artefacts offer a unique insight into Tudor life. From cannons to nit combs, from peppercorns to shoes, the artefacts of the Mary Rose offer a freeze-frame of life at the time of Henry VIII. Watched by an estimated television audience of 60 million, the surviving part of the hull was raised on October 11, 1982. It was then taken to a dry dock in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard where it has remained to this day, supported on the original cradle. For the next three decades, the hull was sprayed around In all her glory38 NADFAS REVIEW / WINTER 2016 www.nadfas.org.ukMARY ROSE