In the year 1511, Henry VIII of England launched what was to be his flagship, the Mary Rose.

For 33 years, the Mary Rose was the pride of the English fleet, serving in conflicts against the

Scottish and the French. Then in 1545, for reasons not totally understood, it sank.

However, it was discovered again in the late 1960s,

and the secrets it revealed changed our knowledge of Tudor England.

Learn more about the wreck of the Mary Rose and how a 425-year-old wooden ship was salvaged

on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. everywhere daily. Book your ticket to happiness with Sun Express Airlines. So, We tend to think of Britain as a historical seafaring power to be sure they were

but they weren't always the Masters of the Sea.

There was a time when they were a rather middling European power stuck on an island off the coast of continental Europe.

During the reign of Henry VIII, England hadn't yet become the naval power that we think of it as today.

They had no colonies at this point and they didn't even have a powerful Navy.

Henry the 5th, a century earlier, had wanted to build a much more powerful Navy,

but the 100 years war with France and a subsequent

civil war, the War of the Roses, put that idea on hold. From 1422 to 1509, only

six ships were built for the English crown, which sounds surprising for an island nation, but it's true.

When Henry VIII became king and ascended to the throne in 1509,

he had only two ships in his fleet which could be considered serious ocean-going vessels,

the Regent and the Sovereign.

Both the Regent and the Sovereign were a type of ship known as a Carrick.

A Carrick was the successor to the smaller Cog that only had one mast and preceded the much larger Galleon ships.

These were the ships with three and sometimes four masts, usually with a square rig.

The largest ship that Columbus sailed on in his

...