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A ten-question quiz, a short stepper through her story, and a myth-or-fact set. The answers follow the sources used on this site.
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The Mary Rose was lost during the Battle of the Solent on:
Did she sink on her first time out of harbour?
Henry VIII watched the sinking from:
The Mary Rose Trust, and Britannica, date the raising of the hull to:
Polyethylene glycol (PEG) was chosen to stabilise the hull in part because of its success on:
The current Mary Rose Museum, the Trust’s timeline says, opened in:
Her sister ship, ordered at the same time, was:
The 1960s search in the Solent was initiated by:
The hull was transferred into a steel cradle on the seabed, then raised to the surface by the crane barge:
The Trust’s battle page gives the French fleet as:
A short path through her story
1510: a letter of 29 January orders “two new ships” at Portsmouth. They would become the Mary Rose and the Peter Pomegranate. Sources still disagree about whether “built” means 1510, 1510–11, or 1509–1511.
1511: both ships were transferred from Portsmouth to London for fitting out, the Trust’s timeline says. The first account that names the Mary Rose is a letter from June 1511.
17 April 1512: she set sail under Lord Admiral Edward Howard — her maiden voyage as a warship, the Trust says. The Battle of Saint-Mathieu, that same year, was her first battle; Howard picked her as his flagship on 10 August.
19 July 1545: the Battle of the Solent. Henry watched from Southsea Castle. Towards evening the Mary Rose heeled over and was lost.
The only confirmed eyewitness, a Flemish sailor, says she had fired her starboard guns and was turning when a gust pushed the open gunports under. Greenwich says she sank before firing a single shot. Both stay in view.
Within days, salvage was tried. Cables, two larger vessels, snapped masts — and, the Trust notes, a method later used on the Vasa. The wreck was abandoned in 1552, then seen again in 1836.
1965: Alexander McKee began Project Solent Ships, with Margaret Rule. On 1 May 1971, Percy Ackland found frames of a ship. The Mary Rose had been found, lying on her starboard side.
11 October 1982, in the Trust and in Britannica: a lifting frame, a steel cradle, and the crane barge Tog Mor. One Greenwich sentence says she was recovered in 1981. We keep that wording in view.
Conservation: seawater sprays, then PEG from 1994 — chosen in part because of its success on the Vasa — then drying in a ‘hot box’. The current museum opened in 2013.