The Sinking of the Mary Rose

Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

History

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 26 September 2022

⏱️ 44 minutes

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Summary

Exactly forty years ago, in a groundbreaking and spectacular piece of marine conservation that captured the imagination of the world, the Mary Rose was raised from the seabed. The warship, commissioned by Henry VIII in 1511, sank on 19 July 1545 during an encounter between French and English fleets in the Solent, between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. Perhaps up to 500 men were on board, only 34 survived.

In the first of three specials marking the 40th anniversary of the raising of the Mary Rose, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb travels to Portsmouth to find out why the Mary Rose sank. She's joined by Dr. Dominic Fontana, Retired Senior Lecturer in Geography formerly at the University of Portsmouth, and Dr. Alexandra Hildred, Head of Research and Curator of Ordnance and Human Remains at the Mary Rose Trust.

The Senior Producer was Elena Guthrie. It was edited and produced by Rob Weinberg.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	40 years ago, in a groundbreaking piece of marine conservation that captured the imagination
0:12.4	of the world, the Mary Rose was raised from the sea bed. The Mary Rose was a warship that
0:20.2	had been commissioned by King Henry VIII in 1511. Her name reflected his devotion to the
0:26.4	Virgin Mary and of course to his Tudor Rose. Two years later, she was described as the
0:32.0	noblest ship of sail that I true be in Christendom. She was intended for war, and in 1513 she got it.
0:39.5	But she also served Henry in years of peace, being new-made in the 1530s. But in the 1540s,
0:49.5	relations with the French turned bellicose again. In retaliation for the English capture of
0:55.0	Boulogne in 1544, in July 1545, the French sailed into the Solaunt, the straight between the
1:03.6	Isle of White and mainland England. It was the greatest foreign threat of Henry VIII's reign.
1:12.7	And it was during the encounter between the two fleets, the English on the one hand and the
1:18.0	French on the other, that Henry's warship the Mary Rose sank on the 19th of July after 34 years
1:26.1	of active service. Henry watched his ship sink from South Sea Common powerless to stop the tragedy.
1:36.0	When she went down, she had perhaps up to 500 men on board. Because of anti-bording nets across
1:43.2	the top of the ship, because they were wearing heavy chainmailed jerkins, because many of them were
1:48.5	not on board deck but below. Most of the men drowned with the ship. Only around 34 were rescued.
1:58.1	In the 16th century, the tops of the ship's masks remained visible at low tide.
2:04.4	And for 437 years, the Mary Rose lay on the seabed and was forgotten.
2:12.2	Amazingly, however, the silt of the Solaunt preserved the timbers of her starboard side.
2:18.8	In the 19th century, she was rediscovered and in 1982 was heroically raised from the sea.
2:26.9	Today, you can see her in a state-of-the-art museum in Portsmouth, and not only does she survive,
2:33.2	but along with her survive the remains of the crew who drowned and over 19,000 objects.
2:39.6	Many of them, things that don't survive anywhere else that tell us about the details of Tudor Life.
	...

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