Archaeologists Recovered Henry VIII’s 400-Year-Old Lost Warship. What They Found Was Staggering.

Image: OLIVIA HARRIS // Getty Images

Recovery of the Mary Rose unearthed more than 8,000 Tudor-era weapons, a shipwreck record.

By Tim Newcomb

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

  • More than 400 years after the famous Mary Rose sank outside Portsmouth, an impressive effort retrieved the ship.
  • The Mary Rose was a warship commissioned by Henry VIII and a key precursor to the British Royal Navy.
  • Recovery of more than 8,000 Tudor-era weapon artifacts from the sunken ship set a record.

For 34 years, the Mary Rose was the pride of Henry VIII’s fleet. Then, in 1545, one ill-conceived maneuver doomed the 600-ton warship, sinking it in the Solent strait outside Portsmouth as the Tudor king watched from shore. Raising the Mary Rose from the seafloor would take more than 400 years—and yield record-setting discoveries.

The Mary Rose is now the centerpiece of a museum at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard—the very place where the ship was built. But getting it from the bottom of the Solent to that museum floor was a painstaking process that spanned generations.

Read the full article on Popular Mechanics:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/archaeology/a73456223/henry-viiis-favorite-warship/