Every year in July, "The British Hour" broadcasts a special nautical program in honor of SeaFair, featuring sea songs, the words and music of the British Isles, tales of ships and sailors - and always, updates on the raising of the H.M.S. Mary Rose, including interviews with the people involved.
Over the years, my husband and I enjoyed doing the research and producing the programs. We had supported the Mary Rose Trust since its formation in 1978, recording interviews and taping transatlantic telephone reports from Margaret Rule, the trust's archaeological director.
All this was brought to mind recently by the arrival of the tall ships in Tacoma, the local wooden boat festival, and the excited calls from several Queen Anne and Magnolia resident anglophiles reporting that there was a huge international review of the fleet by the Queen taking place at Portsmouth (England). This included, they insisted, a reenactment of Nelson's victory at Trafalgar (the battle, not the square). I was sure they were mistaken, because like any self-respecting English English-major, I knew the Battle of Trafalgar took place in October - Oct. 21, 1805, to be exact. However, I finally obtained the following BBC report, which proved they were right:
Thousands of spectators are expected in Portsmouth as a massive international fleet review gets under way to mark the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar.
The Queen will review 174 naval and merchant vessels and tall ships from 40 countries [including the U.S.] watched by an expected 250,000 onlookers. It will be followed by a mock-up Napoleonic sea battle in the Solent. The day is the culmination of a string of celebrations marking the 1805 British victory over France and Spain. But the reenactment of the battle will be held between a blue and a red team, rather than Britain versus France, in order not to offend the French.
The event follows a long tradition of reviews of the fleet at Spithead mooring off Portsmouth, dating back to medieval times. The last was in 1977 to mark the Queen's Silver Jubilee.
The Mary Rose was Henry VIII's flagship, the great Tudor warship that sank off Portsmouth, on the south coast of England, on July 19, 1545, with Henry VIII himself watching helplessly. The monarch and his courtiers had gathered at Southsea Castle to watch the fleet making its way into the English Channel to repel a threatened French invasion. Suddenly a slight breeze arose, filling the sails of the Mary Rose, about a mile offshore. Named for the king's favorite sister, the Mary Rose was considered the flower of the fleet. But the ship's fate was sealed; she keeled over in full view of the horrified court and sank in a matter of seconds. Among those lost were Capt. Roger Grenville and Vice Adm. Sir George Carew, whose wife, also witnessing the tragedy from the castle, fainted dead away. Henry, stricken with sorrow, tried to comfort the lady.
Of the 700 men on board, fewer than 40 survived. Anti-boarding nets stretched across the deck trapped the crew and soldiers like a school of fish. Their screams could be heard ashore as the ship disappeared in 40 feet of water.
Fortunately, the story does not end there. The raising of the Mary Rose in 1982 was an event Prince Charles called "one of the greatest adventures of our time." Prince Charles, as the president of the Mary Rose Trust, which was responsible for the actual raising of the ship, was among the divers who saw the wreck many times as she lay on the bottom of the ocean.
The salvage operation was presided over by Margaret Rule. This determined lady didn't just sit behind a desk shuffling papers; she actually donned a wetsuit and physically worked on the half-buried Tudor wreck. In her own words, from one of the many tape reports:
Hovering just off the bottom I examined the huge timbers, each more than a foot square at my face. As I fanned silt away with my hand, the seabed fumed and smoked around me. I was delighted, for the silt that now obscured the wreck had entombed and preserved it for more than four centuries.
In addition to this report, Prince Charles related a scary experience on one occasion when he was diving with Margaret Rule and came face-to-face with a couple of hollow-eyed skulls that he said scared the life out of him, reminding him of "something out of 'Jaws.'"
The long-awaited moment finally arrived on a cold October morning in 1982 when the Mary Rose was raised from her watery grave. The artifacts recovered have given us a microscopic view of the Tudor period. More than 17,000 of them, large and small, were recovered, including the only known example of the famous English long-bow and arrows. There was everything from a few plums in a pewter tankard to the rats that didn't have time to desert the sinking ship.
After all our communication, it was not until 1988 that we finally met Margaret Rule, very much resembling a country squire's wife in well-worn tweeds and sensible shoes. The encounter took place at the Museum of History and Industry, right here in Seattle, on the last stop of the traveling Mary Rose exhibit on this continent. Beautifully presented by MOHAI, it was a very exciting time for us as we attended receptions and met many VIPs from Britain and the U.S. My husband recorded several interviews with Margaret Rule, who said:
To me one of the greatest satisfactions
is that, in the process of recovering Mary Rose, we trained literally hundreds of young volunteer divers, archaeologists, and conservators to be professionals of
proven ability. Of their unique contribution Prince Charles recently wrote: "The only real way of understanding and coping with
the present is, I believe, through an ade-quate knowledge and interpretation of the past. From that point of view we are able, for once, to transform a contemporary naval disaster into a victory in terms of human awareness." I can think of no better epitaph for Mary Rose.
The Mary Rose now proudly stands at Portsmouth next to Lord Nelson's H.M.S. Victory. There is also a museum in Portsmouth containing more than 2,500 artifacts. Worth taking a look next time you're in England.
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