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Hail Star of the Sea: the Mary Rose revealed in all her glory

  • Philip Crispin

Mary Rose

Mary Rose

Four hundred and seventy one years to the day after she sank in the Solent, on the 19th July 2016, the Mary Rose was unveiled to the world in a spectacular and new visual way in Portsmouth's Historic Dockyard. Shortly after 11am, a vast checkered curtain of three lions and fleurs de lys fell to the floor, revealing a completely clear and uninterrupted view of the ship's hull.

The Mary Rose has been undergoing continuous conservation since she was raised from the sea-bed in 1982 but now all the black drying ducts, the last phase of this process, have been removed. The erstwhile peepholes in the Mary Rose Museum have been replaced by wall to ceiling glazing: stunning views of the ship can now be found from nine galleries.

The cries, it was recorded, could be heard on shore. The piteous shrieks of men "drowning like rattens". And yet they were the crew of Henry VIII's beloved flag ship, the Mary Rose - the pride of the English "Navy Royal" - which sank before his very eyes during the Battle of the Solent on the 19th July 1545.

Quite why the Mary Rose, the "noblest ship of sail", sank is a mystery. Too many bodies and armaments aboard, some claimed. A sudden gust of wind caused her to list, allowing the seawater to gush into her open gun ports, said another. Whatever the reason, of the estimated 500 crew, no more than 35 survived. Most were trapped below decks, or snared beneath the anti-boarding netting covering the main deck - caught in their own net.

King Henry watched her sink from nearby Southsea Castle which was also built at his command.

The museum finally reunites the ship with many thousands of the 19,000 artefacts and the crew's mortal remains recovered from the wreck (179 identified individuals). The excavation and 'resurrection' from the deep of the Mary Rose in 1982, after 437 years underwater, remain unparalleled coups in the field of maritime archaeology. Almost 28,000 dives took place in the world's largest underwater historical salvage operation. Each object in the museum has been carefully conserved through a ground-breaking process which has now reached its climax with the unveiling. The greatest hoard of Tudor artefacts in the world are reunited with the ship in specially controlled conditions.

"Domini exaudi orationem meam et clamor meus ad te veniat" [O Lord hear my prayer and let my cry come unto thee]. These words of a soul in distress, from Psalm 102, were inscribed in Latin around the border of the most ornate book cover to be recovered from the wreck. What could be more apt? Or more prophetic? The drowning men would surely have called upon God (whose Spirit had travelled over the face of the waters), and a great many would, it appears from objects recovered, have called upon the Virgin Mary and the saints, too.

Henry VIII had broken with Rome several years earlier and the English Reformation, driven from above, was slowly extending its official grip on the nation. Following the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry's coffers were replenished and he was able to afford a substantial and expensive re-fit of the Mary Rose in 1536.

The Mary Rose was engaged in sea-battle with the ships of Catholic France when she sank, yet, intriguingly, no fewer than ten rosaries were recovered from the wreck. Mechanical rosary praying had been banned in 1538 (and all use of the beads was condemned in 1547) yet, deeply ingrained Catholic practices were still clearly being observed. There was a popular resistance to the new religious prescriptions. The beads are made variously from boxwood, coral, brass and silver. Two chaplets have cone-shaped beads with three dots drilled into them, representing the Trinity.

As well as the rosaries, or 'paternosters' as they were familiarly called, archers' wrist-guards from the ship bear religious symbols and prayers. Two are inscribed with words of prayer to Jesus's mother: "Ave Maria gracia [sic] plena dominus tecum..." (the first words of the 'Hail Mary' in Latin); and, almost certainly, this poignant line from the Salve Regina: "Et jesum benedictum fructum ventris tui nobis post hoc exilium ostende" [and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus]. Up until the Reformation, England was known as Our Lady's Dowry.

Another wrist-guard depicts the Crucifixion and another carries the cross-keys associated with St Peter (and the Papacy), although this was also the heraldic device for the Diocese of Exeter whence several of the bowmen may have come. An ornamental serving flagon - carries the motto in Latin: "If God is for us, who can be against us" (Romans 8. 31). Due to the difficulty of storing water, the crew were allocated one gallon of ale a day. Henry had constructed four breweries in Portsmouth to supply his fleet.

The most ornate book cover found on the wreck has three panels, containing a deer, a bird and a unicorn, respectively. These could all feasibly be Christian motifs: As the deer yearns for running streams, my soul longs for you O Lord; for birds, think dove, phoenix, pelican etc; the unicorn symbolises a Christian pilgrim, the horn piercing through the veil of earthly confusion into enlightened spiritual understanding.

The letters IHS (the first three letters for Jesus in Greek) are embroidered in silver thread on a pouch; and the symbol of the cross is carved on a linenfold panel.

The ship's very name recalls a happier time before the rift in Christendom. When the ship was first built in 1511, Henry was a loyal son of the Church. Indeed, a few years later, he was honoured with the title defensor fidei for his defence of orthodoxy against Luther. It was long held that the Mary Rose was named after Henry's sister, Mary Tudor, and after the Tudor rose. But no direct evidence for this exists. Now, it is argued, that the ship's name revered Blessed Mary the 'Mystical Rose', and England's patron; there was a long-standing tradition of such pious naming and two of Henry's other great ships were called Henry Grace à Dieu and the Peter Pomegranate - the pomegranate being Catherine of Aragon's royal emblem.

The Anthony Roll (an illustrated record of all Henry's warships) depicts a wooden rose emblem prominently displayed in the bow of the ship and this was surmounted by the IHS monogram. In 2005, 23 years after the ship's 1982 raising, an eroded timber was found from the bow area which bore the elusive image of the rose: the Rosa Mystica. This showed to all that here was a ship of a devout Catholic King.

The Mary Rose escorted Henry and an enormous court-contingent to his celebration of new-found amity with France at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, near Calais, in 1520. Yet this friendship was brittle. Within two years, the two nations were back at war. When Henry broke with Rome and divorced Katharine of Aragon in the mid-1530s, he contrived to unite the whole of Catholic Europe against him.

The enormous French fleet, almost twice the size of the 1588 Spanish Armada, which appeared off the Isle of Wight in 1545, bore the flags of the papacy, as can be seen in the Cowdray Painting which depicts the sinking of the Mary Rose. She foundered and met her end in a 'holy war'.

The museum design, built around the venerable oak hull of the Mary Rose, the only sixteenth-century warship on display in the world, has been ingeniously conceived as a finely crafted wooden jewellery box. And infinite treasures lie within under strict environmental conditions. Lights are dim. You could be entering a shrine, with exhibitions glimmering over several subterranean floors (the museum is built around an historic dry-dock a stone's throw from where the Mary Rose was built), while the sound of creaking timbers and the clanging bell cast you once more onto the briny. Fleeting projections of life aboard ship during war and peace are cast upon the hull: so many phantoms from the past.

Thanks to facial reconstruction, visitors can look certain members of the crew - a carpenter, a cook, a master gunner - in the eye and discover their personal and professional belongings.

It is both moving and amazing to discover these men, their lives and this great ship through all the precious relics on display. Hatch, the ship's dog, is now an alert skeleton. Combs come complete with nits and human fleas. There is a pewter bleeding bowl and a syringe courtesy of the barber-surgeon. From the galley, we have a four-legged stool used for chopping meat, the backbone of a cod, and even charred fuel logs from the oven, untimely quenched. There are precious pepper corns, a type of early backgammon board, and tiny dice; mighty cannon and an array of weaponry, including a great many longbows which, we learn, were pulled at almost twice the weight than had previously been thought. A bowman's skeleton reveals a repetitive strain injury to his shoulder, and a twisted spine.

Maritime might started with the Mary Rose. Indeed, she marks a turning point in history. She was almost certainly the first ship to fire a broadside in anger, but one of the last to use archers and longbows to shoot arrows. Following her loss, the Navy redesigned its ships to make them less top heavy and also altered its tactics to fight in open water.

Entering the rarefied Admiral's Gallery at the end of the tour is like entering into Holbein's Ambassadors. Here are astonishing musical instruments: two violins (that's two of only three sixteenth-century fiddles that we have); a long three-holed pipe and tabor (which verifies pictorial depictions from the period); a douçaine (a rare wind instrument), and a shawm (an early form of clarinet). There is fine pewterware to eat and drink from; fashionable garments, and books to read; including, it is believed, the Bible in English.

A breathtaking museum and memorial. All hail Star of the Sea.

For further information and to book tickets, visit www.historicdockyard.co.uk/tickets and for the Mary Rose project: www.maryrose.org

Dr Philip Crispin is a Lecturer in Drama at the University of Hull.

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