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The long scientific voyage of Tudor warship the Mary Rose

Henry VIII’s favourite warship is on view again, and it’s been a long battle to get it to a point at which people can breathe the same air as the ship’s ancient timbers

By Chris Simms

21 July 2016

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Shiver me timbers: the Mary Rose in all her glory

Stephen Foote, Courtesy Mary Rose Trust

The watch bell rings out amid the hubbub of a shipful of people. Sailors set to work on the sails; the barber-surgeon yanks out a tooth; in the galley, men are cooking for 500 shipmates. Then everything changes as the enemy approaches. Noise and practised activity break out. Cannons are primed; archers take up their bows and loose arrows from the top deck. The 16th-century ship the Mary Rose has come to life in a way not seen since it sank in 1545, battling the French.

Open to visitors again after a six-month hiatus, this Tudor time capsule is now lit up with CGI vignettes along its length. As you move along the glass-panelled viewing platforms parallel to the elegant remaining half of the ship, the sound effects change to match the videos. The dramatic and impressive display gives you a rare visual and aural insight into what it might have been like to tread a Tudor ship’s decks.

What museum objects tell us about life at the time can be fascinating. And the thousands of beautifully preserved objects from Henry VIII’s favourite warship do give us an unrivalled look at life during his reign. But it is much more than that. The fact you can now see it close up and breathe the same air that surrounds its ancient timbers is a testament to the epic conservation effort that kicked in after the ship was raised from the bottom of the Solent near Portsmouth in 1982.

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Up she goes: last voyage of Henry’s favourite ship

Mary Rose Trust

Unlike its contents, the ship was too big to be placed into something to be safely dried and sterilised. If the structure – waterlogged and home to all sorts of marine bacteria and fungi – dried too fast, it would crack and collapse, so another approach was needed. And you can read part of the story in the hull itself.

For 12 years, it was sprayed with a mist of chilled water. Then from 1994 to 2013, the conservationists doused it with polyethylene glycol (PEG), which might also be used in future human head transplants. This compound penetrated the wood, supporting the timbers from the inside, while a biocide was used to kill off the resident waterloving bacteria and fungi that were eating away at the wood. The white residue left on the timbers is the telltale sign of PEG’s use. So why does the ship look so dry now? Because dehumidifiers have sucked tens of tonnes of water from the hull since 2013, bringing it to a stable state that should last many years.

If you look carefully at the nails in the timber, you might see another sign of the conservation battles. There are yellowish traces in some places − iron and sulphur in the wood. The ship was held together by iron nails and wooden pegs. Inevitably, the nails rusted, forming iron oxides. When the ship was sitting under sediment on the sea floor, the anaerobic bacteria there used this oxidation of iron as an energy source, producing, among other things, a toxic weak acid called hydrogen sulphide, further weakening the timbers. Iron pyrite was also created and the crystals can get so big that they crack the wood, says Eleanor Schofield, the conservation manager of the Mary Rose. Which is why the internal supports for the hull are made from titanium. “More iron really isn’t what the ship needs,” says Schofield. Iron and sunken ships don’t get on.

So look beyond what you see. The Mary Rose is more than a time capsule – it has interwoven stories from many eras, and is all the more interesting for it. The 34 years it sailed the seas have now been matched by the years it has been out of the water. Sandwiched between these brief periods it sat underwater 437 years, crewed by microbes and the skeletons of the crew and a dog. Who knows what tales it might tell in a few more centuries?

The Mary Rose Museum, Portsmouth, UK, from 20 July 2016

Article amended on 18 August 2016

Clarification:This article has been updated to make it clearer that not all the supporting structure of the ship is titanium. The cradle the ships sits on is made of steel.

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