Mary Rose: Flower of the King's Ships (From Basingstoke Gazette)

Mary Rose: Flower of the King's Ships

12:50pm Thursday 7th May 2009

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HENRY VIII’s favourite ship sank during the Battle of the Solent in 1545, in the face of a force that was far larger than the Spanish Armada.

That ship was the Mary Rose and watching its demise with the King was the owner of Basing House, Lord St John, governor of Portsmouth and of Southsea Castle, who later became known as the first Marquis of Winchester.

Henry’s fleet of 80 ships and 12,000 soldiers were to fight against 225 French vessels and a massive contingent of 30,000 soldiers.

The French had landed on the Isle of Wight and the King, with the likes of Lord St John, watched his fleet leave Portsmouth to engage the enemy.

We can only imagine Henry’s consternation when he saw his pride and joy sink. He had commissioned the Mary Rose during the year of his coronation in 1509 and it was one of the finest ships of its day.

According to Alan Turton, curator of Basing House, in Old Basing, no one knows for sure why the ship sank.

Alan is scheduled to give a talk to Basingstoke Archaeological and Historical Society called The Flower of the King’s Ships – The Mary Rose, on Thursday, May 14, as a volunteer member of the Mary Rose Information Group.

He said: “There is a lot of speculation about how she was lost. The latest theory is that she was damaged by French gun fire, but whether that caused her loss or whether she had recently been structurally altered and there was a weak point in her, which left her unable to take a bit of battering, nobody knows.

“No major ship at the time was lost by gun power.

They would catch fire in action, but it’s very difficult to sink a wooden ship.”

Alan said that well over 400 men were on board the Mary Rose when it sank. Only 35 survived.

He said: “One reason for the huge loss was that sailors, for superstitious reasons, did not learn to swim in those days.

“The other reason may have been because as she was in action, she had her anti-boarding nets on deck, so people couldn’t get off.

“So probably the people who survived were the soldiers up in the forecastle and aftercastle and sailors working on the rigging, because when she hit the bottom of The Solent her masts tips were still above the water.”

Records show that Lord St John attempted to raise the ship. “His name appears on all the letters about getting divers and ships together to try and lift her off the seabed, which I always say took a bit longer than they thought it would,” joked Alan.

The Mary Rose was rediscovered on the seabed in the 1960s, but it was not until 1982, that the ship’s hull was raised, using a special air-cushioned cradle.

The £4million project was the most ambitious maritime archaeological project ever undertaken.

The event was watched by millions of people on TV. They saw the jagged edges of the ship’s timbers break the surface and a cannon at Southsea Castle was fired to mark the historic moment.

The event was not without incident, as one of the pins holding the lifting frame sheared and a steel line snapped and part of the 80 tonne frame smashed down into the hull.

Fortunately, no real damage was done to the hulk and she was transferred to Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard, close to where she was built, in the first purpose-built dry dockyard in Britain.

Today, visitors can see the ship in the Mary Rose Ship Hall. To preserve its remaining timbers, the ship is being continuously sprayed with a water- soluble wax called polyethylene glycol (PEG) Once this process is completed, followed by several years of drying out, Alan said the remains of the ship should last for thousands of years.

In September, a £35m project will start to build a permanent museum, enclosing the Mary Rose complete with reconstructed decks on either side of the ship’s hull. While the work goes on, visitors will still be able to see some of the 20,000 artefacts brought up from the seabed at the nearby Mary Rose Museum.

Eminent Tudor historian Dr David Starkey has described the Mary Rose as the English Pompeii.

Alan agrees and said: “She is as unique as Pompeii is, as it is a moment in time sealed. A whole segment of seafaring English life, which is so important to the history of this nation, was encapsulated. It’s got everything from the nits and flea combs up to the officers’ dining sets, clothes, leather shoes and boots and bits of shirts that have survived.

“It even has things which people thought shouldn’t have been there or hadn’t been invented – box compasses for instance and navigation equipment like slate protractors. All these things have added so much to our knowledge of 16th century seafaring.”

l The Flower of the King’s Ships – The Mary Rose starts at 7.30pm at Church Cottage, Church Square, Basingstoke, starting at 7.30pm. Admission to non members of BAHS is £2.

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