The Good Ship Mary Rose

by Lotte Evans

On one of my kitchen benches sits a little handy tray which I bought several years ago at a flea market for a dollar. On this tray is a picture based on the only contemporary illustration existing of the gallant ship the Mary Rose which was the pride and joy of Good King Hal, better known as Henry VIII, the much married King of England.

The Mary Rose was a warship and as such fought gallantly in several battles but disaster struck when she sank during an engagement with a French invasion fleet a mile and a quarter from the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour in forty feet of water. For the men on board there was no recoiling or fleeing. Soldiers, gunners and archers were trapped at action stations, either between decks or beneath the heavy netting which covered the weather deck in the waist of the ship. King Henry and his entourage witnessed the battle on shore and eyewitnesses described the heartrending cries of the stricken ship's company.

There have been many ship wrecks throughout history and most of these wrecks still lie wherever they sank but not so the Mary Rose. Amateur divers started to search for the ship on the sea bed and in 1965 it was found by using sonar.

>From the day of the discovery until 1982 six hundred volunteer divers and large number of scientists, archeologists and many more volunteers on shore were actively engaged in the preparation of the raising of the Mary Rose which occurred on the 11th October 1982.

Now after this brief description of the history of this ship we will get back to my little tray. You see looking at it daily when I made my coffee I got this hankering to see what the Mary Rose looks like now. And that's exactly what I did on a wonderful visit in the company of Elders Listowner Pat Davidson to the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard which is home to three of the world's greatest historic ships, the Mary Rose, HMS Victory and HMS Warrior 1860.

I must admit I gave the HMS Warrior the go bye, not because I would not have liked to see it but I headed straight for the Mary Rose Exhibition and never noticed the Warrior.

Before we entered a guide handed each visitor a handheld device which contains an audio tape which provides a tremendous amount of information about every part of the ship.

We entered a large hall and there behind glass lay what could be saved of the wreck. It is quite an awesome sight. The ship stands as high as a four storey building and weighs about 350 tons, which is half of the original 700 tons and it does look like a cross-cut at present. One can see the various decks and the size of the cabins and store rooms. The first impression is that the ship must have been quite large but when one considers that the listed crew consisted of 200 mariners, 185 soldiers and thirty gunners. And if that wasn't a big enough crowd, one eyewitness account claims that there were 700 men on board when she sank.

The starboard side cannot be seen by visitors at the present time but there are plans to include a viewing gallery all around the wreck.

But it isn't just the ship which makes this visit interesting. There are innumerable items which are on show. For example the complete barber surgeon's chest and all its tools, amongst them three metal syringes for urethral injections (makes you twinge doesn't it), cauteries for the amputation of limbs and assorted ointments can be seen.

There are exhibits of the cobbler's work bench, how the ships crew passed their leisure hours, what they wore and what they ate.

Although the ship carried seven heavy bronze guns and thirty-four heavy iron guns more than 3,500 arrows and 138 whole longbows were recovered from the ship and a large number are on show.

Some 200 skeletons were found, nearly all of them of young men in their twenties with an average height of 5 foot 7 inches. I am mentioning this because quite a number of them had been archers with a marked skeletal shoulder development accentuated by their profession. I could just imagine those guys pulling a six foot six longbow; no wonder they had wide shoulders.

There is also a video one can watch. It shows the raising of the Mary Rose. Prince Charles, who is the President of the Mary Rose Trust, was in the forefront watching this momentous occasion. A reporter suggested the Prince to step on to the wreck when it came to a halt. The reporter felt it would be rather symbolic. The Prince declined. I thought that reporter must have been a knucklehead. I could just imagine what could have happened if the Prince would have stepped on the wet timber, slipped off, or even worse busted something and headed straight into the briney deep.

It was a wonderful experience and I do hope that I will be able to visit Portsmouth again as there is so much to see. After all I ONLY saw the Mary Rose, missed the HMS Warrior and had just enough time to gape at Nelson's Flagship the Victory.

Going back by train to London, one of the passengers told me that she was on a visit from the States and that she had a marvelous time at the Naval Museum where she managed to verify that one of her ancestors had been a midshipman on the Victory. I asked her what she had thought of the ships. She told me that she wasn't interested in them at all. All her interest was centred around genealogy.

Ah well I thought, it takes all kinds.