It had not seen the light for nearly 500 years, when the plucky Mary Rose went into battle for the final time before sinking into the Solent and gaining its place in the history books. This week, the rose emblem adorning the ship itself is to be unveiled to the public for the first time, after it was salvaged from the seabed as little more than a nondescript piece of wood.
The emblem, the earliest surviving figurehead of its kind, shows the carved Tudor rose, which would once have blazed gloriously with coloured paint to inspire men of Henry VIII’s favourite warship into battle.
Carefully conserved in a decade-long project, it will now go on display to the public for the first time after being properly identified, taking its rightful role in history for the first time. The find has been described as “tremendously exciting”, and is the culmination of 33 years of restoration work since surviving parts of the ship were raised to the surface in Portsmouth.
In 2003, the Ministry of Defence funded three years of further excavations to the area after applying to build a channel nearby, allowing divers to search for the bowcastle, stem and anchor of the ship.
As they completed their mission, preparing to lift the items to join the rest of the ship on dry land, they spotted another piece of wood, around four foot long and “shaped like a lollipop”. Loathe to leave anything behind, the wood was raised as a matter of curiosity, going into a water tank at the Mary Rose Museum without further exploration.
More than a decade on, after a lengthy process of scientific investigation, it has now been properly identified as the ship’s emblem.
A digital reconstruction shows how the red petals would have adorned the still-visible carving of a rudimentary flower at the sturdy end of the wooden artefact. Comparison with the Anthony Roll, the only detailed surviving contemporary depiction of the ship, shows how it would have been mounted on the forecastle, showing the Tudor emblem off to the world.
The findings will form part of the major unveiling of the revamped Mary Rose museum later this week, where the public will be able to see the most complete restoration of the dry ship so far.
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Source: The Telegraph
