When the new Mary Rose museum first opened in 2013, the wreck was still drying after being treated with polyethylene glycol (CA 280). Visitors could only peer at what remained of the magnificent Tudor warship through windows. Now she has reached a stable stage in the drying process and the museum has been reworked so that each of the nine galleries opens up to uninterrupted views of the ship, with no black drying ducts in sight.
The most impressive of these views is from the upper level, where airlocks on either side of the museum open onto a glass balcony. Here visitors overlook the 15m-tall hull, with ghostly vignettes of the crew – cooking, sharpening blades, and readying cannon – periodically projected onto the carefully treated wood. As well as the preserved wreckage, the museum houses a ‘virtual hull’. This is essentially a mirror image of the Tudor structure, reflected across the balcony and walkways that cut through the space along the surviving portion of ship. Encased in one vast 35m-long, three-storey showcase, the virtual hull is decked out with many of the artefacts found on the ship. Thanks to the meticulous work carried out by divers investigating the wreck, the curators have been able to place objects in almost their exact findspots aboard the replica decks.
Looking down from the upper deck, under the glass top of the showcase, you can see the ship’s spare anchor and a large coil of rope, still in excellent condition. On the glass is a graphic representation of the netting that stretched over the open upper decks of the Mary Rose, as can be seen depicted in a 1546 record of ships known as the Anthony Roll. Intended to prevent the enemy from boarding the ship, this netting – reassembled fragments of which are on display elsewhere in the museum – is one of the factors that contributed to such a high loss of life (there were only 35 survivors out of 500 men). As the Mary Rose foundered, it became horridly apparent that a measure designed to keep people out was just as adept at keeping them in: many of those on board were drowned, unable to escape from this deadly cage.
A chicken coup