Today in HistoryâJuly 19: The Sinking of the Mary Rose
On this day in 1545, the Mary Rose sank off the Isle of Wight. Technically, the disaster happened during battle. But the enemy that doomed the ship? The wind.
We mostly know King Henry VIII for his wives. But he was also into warships, and the Mary Rose was his favorite. (Imagine having a favorite warship.)
The ship sank during the Battle of the Solent (the strait where it took place), during a French attempt to invade England. The Mary Rose had her guns out and was turning when a blast of wind hit, causing the ship to list enough for the gunports to dip below the waterline. Water rushed in through the openings, and the ship foundered so quickly that most of the 500 men onboard were lost.
Henry VII had begun bringing the English Navy into the 16th century, and his son, Henry VIII, finished the task, transforming a motley group of 10 ships into a formidable fleet of 50.
In fact, the king himself had been having dinner aboard the ship that Sunday when five French ships showed up. He quickly disembarked as the crew readied for battle.
The king watched from a nearby castle as his ship disappeared beneath the water.
Salvage operations commenced immediately but accomplished little, and the wreck gradually disappeared into the sediment of the Solent. That is, until 1836, when some fishermen snagged their nets on something.
The discovery sparked another wave of âsalvageâ operations: Anything that could fetch a price was hauled up and sold, before the wreck was abandoned again, presumed destroyed by the explosive charges used in excavations.
The Mary Rose holds the world record for most medieval weaponry ever recovered from a shipwreck.
But it wasnât destroyed.
In 1971 the wreck was relocated. The salvage operation this time was painstaking: It involved more than 28,000 dives, 500 volunteer divers, and numerous scientists, conservators, archaeologists, and excavators and took over 11 years. The hull finally broke the surface in 1982, 437 years after sinking.
Because the ship sank so quickly and was covered in mud, an oxygen-free environment preserved nearly 20,000 objectsâfrom clothing to weapons to ceramics to the bones of a dogâmaking the wreck an unparalleled museum. Visitors today can walk alongside the restored hull in Portsmouth and come face to face with Tudor history.
- 34 years: Age of the Mary Rose when she sank
- 179: Bodies of crewmembers recovered during modern salvage operations
- 60 million: People who watched the shipâs raising on TV in 1982
- 1553: Lady Jane Grey is deposed as queen of England after only nine days
- 1848: With the opening of the Seneca Falls Convention, the U.S. womenâs suffrage movement begins
- 1980: The heavily boycotted Summer Olympics open in Moscow
