Preserving the Mary Rose

Chemistry World ^ | 21 March 2014 | Jon Evans

[neverdem]

The Tudor battleship has been stabilised and is now on display in a new museum. Jon Evans explores the chemistry stopping those timbers shivering

To avoid potentially damaging shrinkage, the hull was sprayed with water for about 12 years, then with PEG for 19 years © Peter Phipp / Travelshots.com / Alamy In many ways, the sea has not been particularly kind to the Mary Rose, the flagship of Henry VIII’s navy when it faced an invading French fleet at the mouth of Portsmouth Harbour in July 1545. For a start, it engulfed the ship, with the loss of over 350 men.

The French claimed to have holed the Mary Rose, but there is no real evidence for this. In reality, the sinking was probably a combination of bad luck and bad seamanship. The Mary Rose was the first ship to sail out and engage three French galleys that had broken away from the fleet, during which it fired its guns. For some reason, the gun ports were then left open, allowing seawater to rush in as the Mary Rose manoeuvred, sinking it...

[Bigg Red]

Just reading about all of the chemical reactions they had to be on guard for during the restoration had my head spinning.

[Sherman Logan]

Probably the last hurrah of war archery in the western world was at Lepanto.

The archers here were the Ottomans using their composite bows, the eastern equivalent of the English longbow, probably with roughly equivalent draw weights and shooting distances.

The Catholic forces depended mostly on firearms for distance weapons, though there were no doubt quite a few crossbows around.

It is believed so many Turkish archers died at Lepanto that it essentially changed the balance of power in the Med. The Turks rebuilt their fleet in just a few years, but replacing tens of thousands of lifelong archers was not so easy.

[SunkenCiv]

That vasa a bad day.