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WET & HOT NEWS ! > Tudor
Mary Rose goes on display at Crufts
The 11 Mar. 2010 at 05:14Museum news
By Beth Hale - Mail Online
She may have been a mongrel, but in the finest tradition of seafaring, this old sea dog went down with her ship. And there she stayed, on the seabed - for the next four and half centuries.
The unfortunate hound was on board Henry VIII's flagship Mary Rose when the ill-fated warship sank to the bottom of the Solent on July 19, 1545.
The dog, now preserved as an almost complete canine skeleton, acquired the nickname Hatch after divers discovered her remains near the sliding hatch door of the Mary Rose’s carpenter’s cabin.
Experts believe the hound, estimated to have been between 18 months and two years old, earned her keep as the ship's ratter – superstitious Tudor seafarers did not have cats on board ship as they were thought to bring bad luck.
And she was probably very good at her job – only the partial remains of rats’ skeletons have been found on board the Mary Rose.
By contrast Hatch's skeleton is remarkable for how well it has been preserved, it is 99 per cent complete with a just a few teeth and a few paw bones missing.
After 34 years at sea and three wars, the Mary Rose had been regarded by many as invincible.
Then, as she defended England from a French invasion force, she sank taking with her 500 men and a treasure trove of Tudor history with her to the seafloor.
So complete was the Mary Rose's demise that even the rats didn't even the chance to leave the sinking ship, as experts discovered when they brought the vessel and her contents (rodent skeletons included) back to the surface.
But the rats on board ship didn't stand much of a chance back in the 16th century, not with Hatch on board.The Mary Rose's artefacts give us a unique insight into Tudor life
The 12 Oct. 2009 at 10:15Famous Wrecks
By Dr Eric Kentley - Times Online
Launched as the flagship of a young and ambitious king, the Mary Rose was not only a reflection of Henry VIII’s ambitions, she was also a new breed of warship. She was one of England’s first ships to be built with gunports: part of the first generation of broadside-firing warships that heralded the beginnings of a 300-year period of warship design.
But the Mary Rose is important not only to maritime historians. It is also what she took with her to the bottom of the Solent in 1545 that gives her a special significance. These were the possessions and tools of 500 men from all levels of society. The 19,000 artefacts that have been recovered range from gunners’ linstocks to gambling dice, from a bosun’s call to a rosary.
There is no comparable collection of Tudor artifacts anywhere: no other archaeological site has given us so many insights into Tudor life. No other shipwreck, no other structure and no other collection gives such a clear window into the 16th century. It is no exaggeration to describe the Mary Rose as England’s Pompeii.
Her loss at a precise moment gives us a chronological reference point for all the artefacts that went down with her. This is almost unique for a museum collection. Specialists from many fields consistently remark how the Mary Rose artifacts they have studied represent the earliest known examples of their type or provide unique information for the study of human society.