Mary Rose drops anchor in new Portsmouth museum

Nearly 500 years after sinking off England’s southern coast, the Mary Rose has a new home.

It is of course been more than 30 years since Henry VIII’s famous warship was salvaged but now it has permanent place in a self-titled state of the art museum in Portsmouth.

Maritime archaeologist, Christopher Dobbs, explained how the ship has revealed surprising hidden treasures:
“We also found a complete cabin that had tons of tools and in that cabin was a backgammon set, quite extraordinarily, and just outside the cabin next to a couple of chests was this dog and to have actually had the remains of a dog surviving from the Tudor period, perhaps the carpenter’s dog, as well as all the carpenter’s possessions, it’s just extraordinary.”

Maintaining the ship and her precious possessions is now the focus of a team of scientists who are discovering new conservation techniques.

For decades the ship’s timbers have been constantly drenched with chemicals to preserve them, initially with sea water and later with a chemical called polyethylene glycol, a resin to replace the water in the cells of the sodden timber.

“Another amazing thing about the Mary Rose collection is that we’ve got some of the objects which belonged to some of the professionals on board. So, for instance, the surgeon, we’ve got a complete chest containing all of his ointments and jars and so on and in extraordinary condition,” says Dobbs.

For naval historians to archeologists, the museum looks set to give the Mary Rose a new lease of life.