The Raising of the Mary Rose
Juliet Gardiner charts the progress of the project to raise the Mary Rose from the seabed.
Immediately after the sinking of the Mary Rose , plans were set in progress to raise her; two Venetian salvors, Peter de Andreas and Simon de Marine, were paid 40 marks from the Treasury of the Chamber to salvage the ship, hut the silts of the Solent had covered her so completely that they only succeeded in tearing out the mainmast. Thereafter the ship lay undisturbed until the 1830s when John and Charles Deane, a highly successful team of salvage divers, lifted several guns and other objects from her.
The site remained forgotten until the late 1960s, when Alexander McKee, a local historian and diver, included the search for the Mary Rose in the brief for his 'Project Solent Ships'. With the aid an enthusiastic team of divers and a newly developed method of underwater survey, side scan sonar, the wreck mound was rediscovered and in 1970 the identification was clinched by the raising of a wrought iron gun. The following year the actual wreck timbers were located, sticking up out of the silt, and the long task of excavating the ship began.
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