HMS Mary Rose.

This is coolbert:

Thanks to the tip from the Chicago Tribune we have this item.

Thirty years in the making!!

HMS Mary Rose the warship from five hundred years ago that museum dedicated to the sunken and then raised-from-the-bottom naval vessel now open!

"Archers of the Purbrook Bowmen, dressed in Tudor looking clothes, fire a volley of flaming arrows from Southsea Castle into The Solent, towards where the Mary Rose sank in 1545"

"Museum housing Henry VIII's sunken flagship opens"

"PORTSMOUTH, England - - The Mary Rose was the flagship of the Tudor navy of King Henry VIII. The vessel sank in 1545 during an invasion by a french fleet. The wreck of the Mary Rose was found in 1971 and raised in 1982. The Mary Rose Museum is the new home to the warship and some of the 19,000 artifacts that sank with her."

After many decades of yeoman service HMS Mary Rose having undergone refurbishment, the ship sinking during a naval battle with the French, THAT REFURBISHMENT HAVING MADE THE VESSEL UN-SEAWORTHY!!

"The Mary Rose was a carrack-type warship of the English Tudor navy of King Henry VIII. After serving for 33 years in several wars against France, Scotland, and Brittany and after being substantially rebuilt in 1536, she saw her last action on 19 July 1545. While leading the attack on the galleys of a French invasion fleet, she sank in the Solent, the straits north of the Isle of Wight. The wreck of the Mary Rose was rediscovered in 1971 and salvaged in 1982 by the Mary Rose Trust in one of the most complex and expensive projects in the history of maritime archaeology. The surviving section of the ship and thousands of recovered artifacts are of immeasurable value as a Tudor-era time capsule."

The Mary Rose Museum something of a "wonderment" just in itself! That museum built AROUND THE HULK OF THE WARSHIP while the wooden hull in the process of a long and arduous preservation! That "long and arduous" controlled processing of the raised-from-the-bottom wood requiring THIRTY YEARS!!

"The Mary Rose Museum is an historical museum designed by architects Wilkinson Eyre and Pringle Brandon Perkins+Will. The museum is located at Historical Dockyards in Portsmouth in the United Kingdom run by the Mary Rose Trust. The museum is dedicated to the 16th century Tudor navy warship Mary Rose as well as the historical context in which she was active. The museum opened in 1984 and displays artifacts from the ship as well as the ship itself in a dedicated ship hall while it has been undergoing conservation."

HMS Mary Rose and the demise of same not so unlike the fate of the Swedish Vasa? Both ships overloaded and top-heavy, not seaworthy and capable of naval combat action but taken to the bottom by a combat commander pushing the envelope way beyond the ordinary. So it seems.

coolbert.