Qualla: Mary Rose

Mary Rose: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Christopher Down, CC BY 4.0. On 19 July 1545, the Mary Rose heeled hard to starboard while engaging French galleys in the Solent. Water poured through her open gunports. The anti-boarding netting strung across her upper deck, intended to keep enemies out, became a roof her own crew could not break through. King Henry VIII watched from Southsea Castle as his flagship turned over and went down with nearly 500 men still aboard. Fewer than 35 survived. The wreck would lie in the silt off Portsmouth for 437 years before being raised, and the men who went down with her would emerge again - bones, possessions, lives suddenly returned to scholarship and to memory.

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Image: Christopher Down | CC BY 4.0

Mary Rose: A Ship for a New Kind of War

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Attributed to Meynnart Wewyck, Public domain. Construction began on 29 January 1510 in Portsmouth, and the Mary Rose was launched in July 1511. She was one of the earliest purpose-built sailing warships in England, ordered into existence as the young Henry VIII rebuilt the small navy he had inherited from his father. The shi...

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Image: Attributed to Meynnart Wewyck | Public domain

Mary Rose: The Crew

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Circle of Hans Holbein the Younger / Hans Holbein the Younger, Public domain. Forensic archaeology has given the men of the Mary Rose back something the sea took away. The bones of 179 people were excavated from the wreck site, including 92 fairly complete skeletons. The crew were all male. Most were young - some as young as 11 to 13, and 81 per cent were ...

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Image: Circle of Hans Holbein the Younger / Hans Holbein the Younger | Public domain

Mary Rose: The Battle of the Solent

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Forscher scs, CC BY-SA 4.0. France had assembled a fleet of perhaps 200 vessels and 50,000 troops at Le Havre with the intent of landing on English soil. By early July 1545 the French were in the Solent. Henry VIII's 80 ships, the Mary Rose and the Henry Grace à Dieu at their head, had retreated into Portsm...

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Image: Forscher scs | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mary Rose: Margaret Rule's Long Project

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Gaylard from Horsham, UK, CC BY 2.0. The wreck site was identified in 1971, and the salvage that followed became one of the most ambitious feats of maritime archaeology ever attempted - comparable in cost and complexity to the raising of the Swedish warship Vasa in 1961. Margaret Rule led the project for the Mary Ro...

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Image: Michael Gaylard from Horsham, UK | CC BY 2.0

Mary Rose: A Tudor Time Capsule

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Crossman of the Mary Rose Trust, CC BY-SA 3.0. What makes the Mary Rose extraordinary is not that she sank but what survived. Because the wreck quickly buried itself in anaerobic silt, organic material that would normally rot has come down to us intact. The ship carried 250 longbows; 172 have been recovered along with almost ...

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Image: Peter Crossman of the Mary Rose Trust | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mary Rose: What the Wreck Means

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Crossman of the Mary Rose Trust, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Mary Rose is the world's only surviving 16th-century warship raised from the seabed. She is a snapshot of a transitional moment in naval warfare, when wood and longbows met cannon and gunpowder. She is one of the earliest examples of a ship designed to fire a broadside, even ...

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Image: Peter Crossman of the Mary Rose Trust | CC BY-SA 3.0