On This Day In History: Favorite Ship Of King Henry VIII ‘Mary Rose’ Sank – On July 19, 1545

AncientPages.com - On July 19, 1545, the warship Mary Rose, a favorite ship of King Henry VIII, sank during an engagement with the French fleet in Portsmouth Harbor.

The Mary Rose was the warship of the English Tudor navy of King Henry VIII. It was constructed between 1509 and 1511 and named after Henry's younger sister, Mary, and the Tudor symbol, the rose.

Illustration of the carrack Mary Rose. Anthony Roll as reproduced in The Anthony Roll of Henry VIII's Navy: Pepys Library 2991 and British Library Additional MS 22047 With Related Documents ISBN 0-7546-0094-7, p. 42.

The only confirmed eyewitness account of Mary Rose's sinking says that she had fired all her guns on one side and turned when caught in a strong gust of wind.

Other accounts agree that she was turning, but there could be several reasons she sank during the maneuver.

After serving for 33 years in several wars against France, Scotland, and Brittany, the ship was largely rebuilt in 1536.

The incident with Mary Rose occurred when she led the attack on the galleys of a French invasion fleet. On this day, Mary Rose sank in the Solent, the straits north of the Isle of Wight. King Henry VIII of England watched his flagship, Mary Rose, capsize in Portsmouth harbor as it left to battle the French.

Seventy-three people died, including Roger Grenville, English captain of Mary Rose.

Henry VIII tried to have the Mary Rose salvaged, but she remained on the Harbor floor until 1982.

The 16th-century warship's wreck was rediscovered in 1971, and seven years later, the hull was exposed and surveyed. When archaeologists first looked at her interior, they found many of the crew's personal possessions and the ship's stores.

In January of 1979, The Mary Rose Trust was formed "to find, record, excavate, raise, bring ashore, preserve, report on and display for all time in Portsmouth, the Mary Rose."

On October 11, 1982, the hull was detached from the silt for eight hours and lifted to the surface. More than 19,000 artifacts were collected from her.

The 1982 wreck salvation was one of the most complex and expensive projects in the history of maritime archaeology.

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