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The Mary Rose was one of King Henry VIII's favourite warships until she sank during an engagement with the French fleet on 19 July 1545. Her rediscovery and raising were seminal events in the history of nautical archaeology. Apart from the Captain and the Vice Admiral, nothing is known about the crew of the Mary Rose - the only evidence about her complement of 415 men rests with their skeletal remains. In The Men of the Mary Rose A.J. Stirland uses archaeological and skeletal evidence to give the reader a welcome insight into the soldiers of the Mary Rose, from their ages and height to their health, diet and physical condition.
This book examines the building, sinking and raising of the Mary Rose and her historical context, before moving on to the examination of what the remain of the crew can reveal to us about the fighting men of that period. Many new findings have been made through analysis of their bones, including the effects of some activities and occupations on the skeletons of the men. This is the first book to deal with the men who made up the crew of the Mary Rose. It provides an exciting glimpse of Tudor life and the Tudor navy, relating archaeological findings to existing documentary evidence, opening a fascinating window into one of Henry VIII's great ships and a frozen moment of sixteenth-century time. This book will appeal both to professionals in the area, and to those for whom Tudor history holds a general fascination.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780752495569 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 04/21/2005 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Sales rank: | 824,065 |
| File size: | 447 KB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
Read an Excerpt
The Men of the Mary Rose
Raising the Dead
By A. J. Stirland
The History Press
Copyright © 2013 Ann StirlandAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-9556-9
CHAPTER 1
Sinking and Raising: July 1545 and October 1982
The Sinking
England in 1544: Henry the VIII has been on the throne since 1509. From a most promising beginning as an intelligent, handsome, accomplished and poetic eighteen year old, he has deteriorated over the years into a middle-aged, louche, despotic and irresponsible monarch of unsavoury habits. He has also persistently squandered the considerable wealth left to him by his father, Henry VII, bankrupting the country. By punitive taxation and the suppression and sale of the monasteries a few years ago, he has temporarily re-filled his coffers. Why does the king require such a constant supply of money? There are two main reasons: firstly, to finance his extravagant life-style and, secondly, to wage his wars.
From the time he came to the throne, Henry VIII has been determined to try to revive the fortunes of England in France by regaining all the lands won by Edward III and Henry V and subsequently lost by succeeding kings. In this early part of the 16th century, Western Europe is dominated by France on the one hand and by the Holy Roman Empire, which rules most of Germany, the Low Countries and Italy, on the other. Henry has chosen to fight France because of its proximity and his own claims to the French throne, and has allied himself with France's enemies.
The first of Henry's French wars was that of 1512–1513, and now there is the present campaign, which seems set to continue. Throughout his reign, the two major enemies of England have been Scotland and France, who have formed an alliance, and there have been persistent problems for the king with both. In order to try and destroy this alliance His Majesty had agreed to a joint invasion of France with Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor. The Emperor, however, has now made his own separate peace with the French, leaving the English king to fight the war alone. From the English point of view, the best result of this first year has been the successful siege and naval blockade of Boulogne between July and September, but this is having costly results for the navy since, after its capture, Boulogne has had to be supplied by the English. This is always a tricky operation, both in terms of French attack (since the English enclave is surrounded by the enemy) and the weather in the 'Narrow Seas' (the English Channel) which is unpredictable.
It is now 1545 and the campaign continues. Francis I, King of France, has gathered together a large fleet during the early part of the year and, by June, this is moored at the various ports on the Seine estuary, under the command of Claude d'Annebault, Admiral of France. Estimates of the size of the fleet vary between 123 and 300 vessels of which a number are sailing warships of different kinds. The French intention seems to be to try to recapture Boulogne but, because the army does not appear to be ready, Francis has decided instead to attack England directly. The fleet sails on the 12th of July and, on the 16th, arrives in the Solent. Meanwhile the English, aware of French intentions, have been making what preparations they can, with full-scale mobilization between February and April, so that by early June Lord Lisle (the Lord Admiral) has 160 ships and 12,000 men at sea. Clearly, there is going to be a naval battle, with the French in the Solent and the English fleet in Portsmouth harbour, trapped by adverse winds.
It is the morning of Sunday, the 19th of July, and D'Annebault's navy is advancing up the Solent towards Spit Sand in three squadrons, with 26 galleys in front firing their single guns. There is little wind and the only English vessels that can engage the French at this stage are a small number of galleys, galleases and rowbarges. Now, the wind has got up and the main English fleet is able to move out of Portsmouth harbour and into the Solent to engage the main French fleet (figure 1). The French galleys retreat and the battle proper begins. The English fleet is led out of harbour by the great ships Henry Gràce a Dieu and the Mary Rose. It is getting towards evening and the Mary Rose is turning on to the other tack, probably to present her broadside. But she seems to have been caught by a freak gust of wind and she is heeling to starboard, filling through her open lower gun ports and sinking. Although there are at least 415 men on board,, only about 30 have survived; the rest are trapped by anti-boarding netting and have drowned, including the Vice Admiral for that engagement and her commander, Sir George Carew, and her captain Roger Grenville, father of the famous Richard who, in the next reign, will distinguish himself in command of the Revenge. It is a major disaster for England and of great propaganda benefit to the French (see Chapter 2).
The Raising
The reasons for the sinking of the Mary Rose on a calm summer evening will be discussed later, but the public nature of this sinking, only about a mile off shore and in full view of the King, his army and what must have been many onlookers will have heightened the tragedy. Not only was she one of Henry's prize ships, she was also the vessel in which his newly-appointed Vice Admiral was sailing. Obviously, it was necessary to attempt to raise her as soon as possible, a task that was overseen by the Lord Admiral, Viscount Lisle, and the military commander Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. As early as the 31st of July, Suffolk wrote to Sir William Paget that he:
"Will with speed set men to the weighing (raising) of the Mary Rose".
On the 1st of August, Paget sent Suffolk a list of:
"things necessary for the recovery with the help of God of the Mary Rose"
and, in a later letter that same day he:
"Trusts that by Monday or Tuesday the Mary Rose shall be weighed up and saved".
Plans to raise the ship progressed and it appears that the decision to use two hulks, which first would be emptied, was the King's. The hulks were the Sampson (whose captain, Francis Finglos, had been taken "sore sick") and the Jesus. The method was to moor these hulks on either side of the Mary Rose:
"and to her masts there is tied 3 cables with other ingens (sic) to weigh her up, and on every side of her a hulk to set her upright".
The cables would be wound tight at low tide and the empty ships would rise with the rising tide, taking the Mary Rose with them. The Mary Rose's sails, yards and rigging had already been removed and taken ashore and it was intended that the ship should be raised on the 6th August. However, the Lord Admiral was still hoping for this to happen on the 7th of August or the following day and, on the 9th, Lisle and St. John wrote to Paget that:
"This day the Italians who had the weighing of the Mary Roos (sic) signify that, by the method they have followed they cannot recover her and have broken her foremast.". The Italians then asked for six more days to try and drag the vessel into "shallow ground".
All attempts to raise the Mary Rose immediately after she sank came to nothing. The main reasons for failure were likely to have been twofold, since salvage of ships was often undertaken with success at this time. First, the mainmast had been pulled out of its step, thus removing the main point of attachment for cables and, second, the ship sank so quickly that she became deeply embedded in the soft upper sediments of the Solent, with her keel resting on the heavy clay layer two to three metres below, thus becoming effectively stuck. Further attempts to raise the ship in the sixteenth century were abandoned and, gradually, the exposed port side became eroded, collapsing into the hull and surrounding scour pits (figure 2). Gravel, shells and other debris settled over the wreck to form a hard, compact seabed and she was forgotten. Periodically, storms would remove part of this seabed, exposing the tops of some of the timbers, which entangled the nets of local fishermen. Then, the timbers would be covered again until the next exposure.
John and Charles Deane were brothers and marine salvage engineers who devised a successful underwater breathing apparatus (figure 3). In 1836 they were invited to investigate an area of the seabed at Spithead where fishermen's lines were frequently caught. When they dived on the area, the Deanes found a large bronze demicannon and old timbers exposed on the seabed. A later dive yielded three more guns from the same wreck area and it was decided, by a committee set up by the Board of Ordnance, that the wreck from which the guns had come must be that of the Mary Rose. During the next four years the Deanes recovered a variety of artefacts from the site, including several human skulls, and it is now clear that what they were finding came from the exposed and collapsed port side of the ship. The matter might have rested there had it not been for the vision of Alexander McKee, an amateur diver and journalist, who founded Project Solent Ships in 1965 in order to search for and record wrecks in the Solent.
There are many wrecks around the coasts of Great Britain. They are in a varied state of preservation, according to the conditions of their burial and the nature of the particular seabed sediments. Project Solent Ships was intended to examine several wrecks from the sixteenth century onwards. The small group of people involved with this intermittent project included Margaret Rule as the professional archaeologist. She would eventually become the project leader in the work on the Mary Rose. Initially, however, the ship had to be found and this proved to be difficult, since the hull was totally buried. Eventually, in 1967, the wreck was found using a dual channel side- scanner and sonar. The side scan showed, by use of acoustic signals, anomalies on the seabed surface and the sonar profiled the buried subsurface. An anomaly was revealed, roughly in the area where the ship later proved to be resting, below the sediments on the seabed. The wreck itself was not found by excavation until 1971, and then volunteers, with limited funds and equipment, excavated on the site until 1978. Protection of the area was afforded by the Historic Wreck Act, which was passed by Parliament in 1973. In 1978, the excavation uncovered an area at the bow of the ship which was preserved just as it had been in 1545 when it settled on the seabed, with artefacts, personal possessions and ship's stores all intact. The Mary Rose Committee, which had been formed in 1967, recognised the cultural, military and historic importance of the ship and it was decided to excavate the hull completely and attempt to recover her for conservation and permanent display.
The problems that the original salvors encountered in trying to lift the Mary Rose from the seabed were finally overcome by the use of a specially designed lifting frame. Divers drilled the empty hull and bolted steel hawsers into it. The hawsers were attached to a steel frame which covered the area of the ship and which had a telescopic leg at each corner (figure 4a). A cradle, which was the same shape as the hull, was made, lined with air bags, and then lowered to the seabed at the side of the wreck (figure 4b). The intention was to lower the legs on the frame until it was stable on the bottom, winch the legs up until the wreck became unstuck, place it in the air-bag lined cradle and winch the whole lot up to the surface (figure 4c). At the surface, there would be a barge on which the hull in its cradle could be placed and then the entire structure towed back into Portsmouth harbour. As is often the case the weather also played its part and, on the proposed day of lifting, it was appalling. However, using the above techniques, the Mary Rose was successfully lifted from the seabed on October the 11th, 1982, and broke the surface once again. Modern technology had succeeded where the sixteenth century Italian salvage experts could not.
CHAPTER 2The King's Ships and the Navy Royal
The Tudor navy was very much an aspect of the state and the King's ships demonstrated his power. When Henry Tudor became Henry VII he both lessened his dependence on the nobility and developed his own personal power during the course of his reign. He increased his revenues and built two large warships and an embryonic naval base at Portsmouth. His son, Henry VIII, followed many of his father's policies, increasing his direct control of much of the country by royal commissions and by the introduction of new revenue courts to handle the income from the suppression and sale of the monasteries.
Henry VIII was a tall, handsome man of great physical energy. He excelled at sports of all kinds and had a great love of life. He was also interested in his new ships and the sea and sometimes acted as an amateur pilot, wearing the symbolic whistle. Like earlier medieval monarchs, absolute power was vested in him and he was a bombastic and warlike king, fond of grand gestures which he could not afford. His armed ships were a status symbol and he created a whole new infrastructure of storehouses and dockyards and, in effect, a standing navy institutionalising all these innovations as a part of government.
It is often said that Henry VIII was the father of the Royal Navy. While he was certainly responsible for building or otherwise acquiring a large number of ships, the statement is only partly true. Henry does not seem to have had a real appreciation of the importance of naval power, at least at the beginning of his reign. His chosen course of action, however, involving war with France and her allies abroad, particularly Scotland, could only be undertaken with a reasonable naval force and so circumstances, in the form of his military ambitions, seem to have forced his hand. At the same time, conditions of land warfare in Europe were changing from their medieval forms and the navy, such as it was, was beginning to change too. It has to be said that Henry does not seem to have acknowledged the importance of sea power per se. This is exemplified both by his continuing to charter his ships for civilian use, even when there was much political tension, and by his inability to develop any good naval strategies during his reign.
When he inherited the throne in 1509, Henry also inherited from his father a small fleet, including the two Great Ships Sovereign and Regent; the Sovereign was about 450 tons and the Regent about 600 tons. A ship's size is defined by its tonnage. Loades states:
"Tonnage was a measure of displacement, not weight, and was based upon an estimation of the number of tuns of Bordeaux wine with which a ship could be loaded.".
Loades also gives Prynne's formula for estimating tonnage as:
"depth of hold, multiplied by keel length, multiplied by main beam, and divided by 100".
This differs a little from Coates' definition, which is:
"length of keel 3 breadth 3 depth of hold divided by 97".
A confusion sometimes arises in the terminology used when describing the size of these ships, where tonnage can be expressed as a ship's 'burthen' or 'burden'. Rodger, defines these last terms as:
"the internal volume or cargo capacity of a ship".
Both the Sovereign and the Regent were four-masted carracks of overlapping clinker build, rather than the edge-to-edge carvel construction which was to become the norm. They appear to have been the first large, heavily armed, purpose-built warships. A programme of maintenance and building existed which had started in the previous reign with dockyards, certainly in Woolwich and Portsmouth, a reasonably active naval administration based at Portsmouth, and a Clerk of the Ships in charge of the storehouses. The first important Clerk of the King's Ships, at least in terms of the development of Tudor naval administration, was Robert Brigandyne, who served both Henry VIII and his father.
The Sovereign and the Regent were not built for any specific war or campaign but they never became redundant, being well maintained and requiring special docking. Until this time, docking for routine maintenance had taken place in mud docks on beaches but this was inadequate for such Great Ships. So, in 1496 a new dock was built at Portsmouth, together with a forge and storehouse, initially for the purpose of maintaining these two ships. It has been described as the first known dry dock in England although this is debatable. It was a new structure in the sense that it had a deep, timber-lined basin and was closed with double wooden gates; nevertheless, it was still necessary to shore up the dockhead with large quantities of stone and rubble. This rubble filled the space between the gates and, like the mud docks, had to be dug out at low tide in order that a ship could leave the dock when the tide rose. A true dry dock is a permanent fixture which ships can enter or leave on a high tide because it has gates that allow this; it does not have to be dug out at low tide every time it is used. It seems that even the dock itself was not really new but a re-build from an earlier, original form, built in 1492. The only difference from the conventional mud docks seems to have been in the timbered dock head and the inner and outer coffer dams enclosing an earth filling. It was only used for long stays and, although it had a pump to help in emptying it, pumps had been in use on ships for some time and were probably not a novelty for a dock. Discussion of this dock occurs in Kitson, Loades and Rodger and is interesting in view of the subsequent building of the Mary Rose. Kitson considered the dock to be an innovation but Rodger states very clearly that it was neither new nor the first dry dock. Loades says that excavation started:
"on the site of the later No. 1 basin on 24 June 1495".
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Men of the Mary Rose by A. J. Stirland. Copyright © 2013 Ann Stirland. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction by Robert Hardy,Acknowledgements,
Preface,
1 Sinking and Raising: July 1545 and October 1982,
2 The King's Ships and the Navy Royal,
3 Early Sixteenth Century England: the Social Fabric,
4 Crewing the King's Ships: Administration, Victualling and Pay,
5 Crewing the King's Ships: Officers and Men,
6 The Skeleton Crew of the Mary Rose: Basic Data,
7 The Skeleton Crew of the Mary Rose: General Pathology,
8 Occupation and Activity,
9 Conclusions,
Appendix I: Epiphyses,
Appendix II: Stature and Various Skeletal Indices,
Appendix III: Femoral Angles and Attachments,
Abbreviations,
Glossary,
Bibliography,