Recovery of Henry VIII’s sunken ship reveals record-breaking amount of medieval weaponry
Over 450 years ago, the Mary Rose ship took off from a port near the Isle of Wight, cutting through the waters of the Solent like a knife.
The ship, and its crew of approximately 500 men, were tasked with protecting England against the invading French navy – and King Henry VIII was watching the progress of his favourite vessel from above, at the nearby Southsea Castle.
But despite the best efforts from the Mary Rose’s crew, the ship capsized before firing a single shot, sending the warship to its watery grave in the silt of the Solent.
The crew, and the contents of the Mary Rose, would not make it home until centuries later – in an incredible recovery effort that revealed new and exciting information about British history, above and below the sea.
The Mary Rose at the Mary Rose Museum. Photo: Hufton + Crow
40 years after the Mary Rose was raised in 1982, the record-breaking work to recover the shipwreck and study its remains awarded the Mary Rose Trust in 2022 with a Guinness World Records title for most medieval weaponry recovered from a shipwreck.
Since its rediscovery off Portsmouth in 1971 and the subsequent raising of its hull in 1982, a trove of more than 8,300 contemporaneous weapons, ordnance, and affiliated artefacts have been salvaged.
The history of a shipwreck
Surprisingly, the Mary Rose was built before the official establishment of the Royal Navy – though both were established by King Henry VIII, who was an enthusiastic shipbuilder.
In prior ages, the Kingdom of England would often enlist privately-owned or merchant vessels alongside their ships for specific campaigns, decommissioning them after use. While this was cheaper than building and maintaining ships in times of peace, it was inefficient to mobilize in times of war, and Henry started building the Navy as soon as he took the throne in 1509.
The Mary Rose and her ‘sister’ ship, the Peter Pomegranate, were ordered to be built via a letter from January 1510, and she was always described as one of Henry’s favourite ships.
The Mary Rose Trust believes the first names of the ships were taken from saints, as was fashion at the time, and their last names are the symbols of the houses of the king and his first wife Katherine of Aragon – a rose and a pomegranate.
Notably, the life of the Mary Rose (1510-1545) coincides almost exactly with the reign of Henry VIII (r.1509-1547) – and she also was built in the same place where she would later sink, in Portsmouth.
A cannon on display from the Mary Rose. Picture: Hufton + Crow
Six months after the Mary Rose was launched, England was at war with France, and the ship began to immediately see action. She would serve the country for 34 years, throughout Henry’s wars, and sometimes as the flagship for the Admiral of the Fleet.
In 1542, Henry began his last war with France, and the Mary Rose was sent to southern England to fend off the incoming French navy. The English were outnumbered, with just 80 ships prepared to fight against the 200-strong French fleet, who reached the Sussex coast on 18 July 1545. The infamous Battle of the Solent would take place just outside Portsmouth Harbour the next day, 19 July.
Henry was perched at Southsea Castle to watch the French advance, while the Lord Admiral brought out the big ships. But in a shocking twist of fate, the Mary Rose caught a strong wind and heeled over to the side, filling the boat with water and sinking the magnificent ship beneath the Solent.
In a report to Charles V, written in code, Francois van der Delft, Imperial Ambassador and an eyewitness to the battle, wrote:
Towards evening, through misfortune and carelessness, the ship of Vice Admiral George Carew foundered, and all hands on board, to the number of about 500, were drowned, with the exception of five and twenty or thirty servants, sailors and the like, who escaped.
There are many theories about why the battle-hardy ship sank so quickly – be it bad weather, human error, excess weight, or a lucky hit by the French – but scientists can’t know for sure.
According to eyewitness accounts and forensic evidence, it was most likely an unfortunate maneuver compounded by unlucky winds, as water flooded into the open gunports after turning too harshly.
But for whatever reason the Mary Rose sank to the depths quickly, with her treasures and caretakers onboard.
What was found
For 420 years, the Mary Rose sat at the bottom of the Solent, her location long lost.
Past attempts to recover her in the 16th and 19th centuries proved unsuccessful, and time and silt eroded her history away from public knowledge.
But all that changed in 1965, when the late Alexander McKee began investigating shipwrecks in the Solent, and he stumbled across old records indicating her resting place. Using new sonar profiling technology, categorical confirmation of its identity came in 1971, and work soon began to raise the ship.
It took over 11 years of careful excavation to get the ship to the point where it was structurally safe enough to be removed, but on 11 October 1982 over 60 million people around the world watched the Mary Rose take in the sea-air for the first time in over four centuries.
After over 28,000 dives, and decades of research, the artefacts recovered from the Mary Rose have provided historians with valuable broader insights into 16th-century European weaponry and warfare, particularly because of the remarkable state of intactness. Several of the items collected from the wreck are unique.
A gunshield from the Mary Rose. Picture: Mary Rose Trust
Some of the most significant ordnance salvaged include: 10 bronze guns; nine iron swivel guns; five handgun stocks; eight gun-shields and four pieces of cast-iron hailshot (both never previously seen); 44 linstocks for lighting gunpowder; three incendiary darts; 172 longbows (250 are listed on the ship's inventory); 3,899 arrows, about 2,303 of which are complete (9,600 on the inventory); 24 wristguards/bracers; 105 bills and 20 pikes (with 836 fragments of what appear to be polearm weapons); one halberd; one complete basket-hilted sword; 65 ballock daggers; one rondel dagger; and 177 chain-mail links.
A complete basket-hilted sword. Picture: Mary Rose Trust
And the offensive and defensive armaments form only a fraction of the 19,000-plus archaeological finds salvaged from the Mary Rose to date across some 28,000 dives.
Iron shots recovered from the wreck. Picture: Mary Rose Trust
Other items to have been found include tools (carpentry, surgical, and navigational), clothing, religious items such as rosary beads, tankards, games, and musical instruments.
A piece of hailshot found on the wreck. Picture: Mary Rose Trust.
Human and animal bones have also been retrieved, including the full skeleton of a whippet-terrier that was most likely employed as a ratter on board the ship – who has been dubbed Hatch, owing to the fact he was found near the door (hatch) to the carpenter's cabin.
Luckily, many of the items on the Mary Rose were preserved thanks to the dark, anoxic (no oxygen, meaning no pests can survive), and stable environment under the silt.
Excavating longbows underwater while recovering the Mary Rose. Picture: Mary Rose Trust
Further research of these objects continues to reveal new information about the lives of those in the Tudor and Medieval periods. The study of recovered coins and pottery and even clothing found onboard helped determine the crewmembers’ social standing, jobs, and pastimes. Continued study of their skeletal remains even helped scientists with research on how bone chemistry changes with age.
After analyzing the 179 human remains onboard, researchers were even able to identify specific crewmembers based on their clothing and DNA, created virtual reconstructions of their faces, and are in the process of identifying any of their kin to return them to their rightful resting place.
The study of their bones also revealed that some of the crew members were ethnically diverse – with at least three of them may have come from southern European coasts, Iberia and North Africa – which was more than previously thought.
Dr Alexzandra Hildred, from the Mary Rose Trust, told the BBC: "The variety and number of personal artefacts recovered which were clearly not of English manufacture made us wonder whether some of the crew were foreign by birth.
"However, we never expected this diversity to be so rich. This study transforms our perceived ideas regarding the composition of the nascent English navy."
Weapons on display at the Mary Rose Museum. Picture: Hufton + Crow
Now, the Mary Rose and her informative treasures rest at Portsmouth’s Mary Rose Museum, and visitors can learn more about her unique collection at her resting spot, so close to Solent waters where she was built, sunk, and raised again.
Header image: Hufton + Crow
Pictures provided by the Mary Rose Trust