![]() Instead, they must be kept damp and slowly transformed by a kind of chemical osmosis, with the water gradually forced out and replaced by chemicals that will preserve the timbers indefinitely – a process that will not be complete in the case of the Mary Rose until about 2015. Waterlogged timbers retain their form but not their substance: having become mainly water, they simply turn to dust if allowed to dry out naturally once exposed to air. The recovery of the part-vessel was the beginning of a long process of conservation not yet complete. Here, a cannon is lifted from the seabed. ![]() (Had the Mary Rose gone down a few hundred metres away, on hard gravel, everything would long since have been lost.) The Mary Rose wreck site has yielded 26,000 artefacts and the skeletal remains of 179 people a combination of evidence that amounts to the most complete picture we have of 16th-century naval warfare and everyday life on shipboard. Much of the vessel had rotted away over more than four centuries on the seabed, but what finally appeared on Monday 11 October 1982 was a full third of the ship, mostly on the starboard side, where the timbers had been protected in the deep sands and silts of an ancient sunken river-channel. It had not been seen on the surface since Sunday 19 July 1545, when, in action against the French in the Solent, the Mary Rose suddenly capsized and sank.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |