The Mary Rose

[mike100]

This is probably a stupid question but why is there so much interest in it? Besides it being an old ship?

[Ward-Minter]

Heritage dear boy, as simple as that. When this country stands on only its last bastion of anything remotely British its nice to know we have a bit of culture left entirely for us.

The history of this great ship is also fascinating. I am not a nerd but check it out!!

[Chessman]

As Ward-Minter says, this ships history is facinating, Henry V111, flagship, sunk in the Solent, its thought that it turned over when testing its guns, Check it out.

[jno]

try this link

[vehelpfulguy]

If the Mary Rose interests you how about the Vasa.

This was a Swedish "tudor" ship that sunk on its maiden voyage but was almost completely preserved. It was brought up and is now in the Vasa museum in Sweden.

I visited there a few years ago and it is amazing.

Try here (select English) http://www.vasamuseet.se/Vasamuseet/Om.aspx

and here http://www.abc.se/~m10354/publ/vasa.htm

[vehelpfulguy]

But to answer your question directly, it is interesting because most boats that sunk in salt water from that time rotted away. We have no remians.

This boat partly survived bacause it was lying in mud. Hence it is one of the few boats from that period to have survived.

[mike100]

Thanks, can't believe it didn't rot away.

[jake-the-peg]

It didn't rot because of the Solent mud - everything was preserved. We found things from the Mary Rose that gave us an understanding of the Tudor period that we just couldn't have had any other way.

Here's an example - You've heard about the incredible longbow how an arrow could go through a knights armour, his leg, his saddle and kill his horse. etc.

Well up to the time of the Mary Rose there were no examples that survived from the middle ages and 5 from the Renaissance. 

138 were recovered from the Mary Rose from these it was possible to see the variation in these weapons, that tells you the height of the people using them, how strong they were and a lot of other things. And thats just what was learnt from longbows.

By the way they were strong the draw weight were 72-80Kg  a bit like doing a one handed pull up for every arrow