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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...

They spent nearly 500 years in a watery grave with no record of who they were, but now the crew of the Mary Rose, Henry VIII’s ill fated flagship, could finally be identified. Scientists have begun work to extract DNA from the bones that were found on board the Tudor warship when it was raised from the bottom of The Solent 30 years ago. They hope to use the genetic information to identify the men who perished on the vessel when it sank and perhaps even trace their living relatives. It comes as a new £23 million museum built around...

For almost 500 years, the sinking of the Mary Rose has been blamed on poor seamanship and the fateful intervention of a freak gust of wind which combined to topple her over. Now, academics believe the vessel, the pride of Henry VIII's fleet, was actually sunk by a French warship – a fact covered up by the Tudors to save face. Academics have found that the Mary Rose may have been sunk by a French warship The Mary Rose, which was raised from the seabed in 1982 and remains on public display in Portsmouth, was sunk in 1545, as Henry...

Just what did the Mary Rose tell us? By Finlo Rohrer BBC News Magazine The Mary Rose in dry dock The raising of the Mary Rose in 1982 was greeted with feverish excitement, but what has this landmark find actually told us in the 25 years since? At the tail end of 1982 it seemed like you couldn't switch on Newsround without seeing something to do with Mary Rose. Our fascination with the ship that met a sticky end while firing at a French invasion fleet in 1545 has flared at times in the years since. It is almost a...

Divers find piece of Henry VIII's warship August 19 2003 at 03:45AM London - Divers may have found the missing front section of the Tudor warship the Mary Rose, marine archaeologists said Monday. Alex Hildred, the dive's project manager, said that if the find was confirmed it would be "the most important maritime archaeology find in England in the last 20 years." Experts have been diving to the wreck off Portsmouth on the southern English coast for the past month, and have excavated a five-metre long piece of wood they believe is the front stem of the ship's keel. The...