Archer makes tragedy of Mary Rose hit home

His occupation is revealed by a twist in his spine and grooves in the bones of his fingers from pulling the drawstring of a longbow. An archer in King Henry VIII’s mighty Tudor army, he was an elite athlete of his day.

Gazing into his empty eye sockets, I couldn’t help but feel an eerie connection.

Adrenalin coursing through his veins, he would have seen the French fleet sailing towards him, heard the blazing of cannons and smelt the sweat of fear mingled with gunpowder – his last memories those of terror as water gushed through decks as he tried to escape.

Indeed, his screams may have been among those heard by the king, as he watched in horror from the shore as the Mary Rose sank while heading out to face the French in the Battle of the Solent on July 19, 1545.

“They are drowned like ratten,”

the king observed as about 500 sailors were taken to their watery grave when the ship keeled over for reasons still not certain.

Coming face-to-face with the archer, who has also been faithfully fleshed out in a lifelike model placed close to his mortal remains, was one of many highlights of a visit to the Mary Rose Museum, in Portsmouth.

Lifted from the seabed 30 years ago, along with 19,000 artefacts and remains of about 180 men, the Mary Rose is a time capsule quite unlike any other. Historian David Starkey has called it Britain’s Pompeii.

Entry to the museum is on the middle of three floors known as the Main Deck, where cast bronze guns and wrought iron guns – the first to have fired a broadside in naval action – point silently from gunports. Axes, wicker baskets, ramrods, powder ladles, boxes of bows and bunches of arrows lie ready for action.

Each floor of the museum mirrors a different deck of the ship, the starboard side of which lies at the heart of the museum.

Conservators have brought to life several other men, whose skulls are displayed along with drawings of what they would have looked like and their belongings.

There is the cook whose name could have been Ny Cop, judging from a crude engraving on his bowl.

Nearby is the master gunner, who had a badly compressed spine from carrying heavy gunpowder chambers and, like most most of the ship’s crew, had terrible teeth. The surgeon was found with his stoneware medicine jars, bandages, and pewter bleeding bowls, along with a menacing-looking syringe.

The purser, it appears, is one of the few who had good teeth.

The skeleton of a whippet terrier-cross named Hatch still stands guard.

The mundane items are the most poignant.

There are dozens of nit combs, that many children today would instantly recognise, ear scoops for picking wax, and an amazing number of rosaries, given that Catholicism was by now outlawed.

While sailors in the ranks went mainly barefoot, those who could afford it sported a variety of footwear, all in an incredible state of preservation.

Visitors are also given the chance to get hands-on experience – to feel the weight of a round shot, test their strength against a strongbow (it’s not hard to see why the archer had a twisted back) and even smell the still-pungent Norwegian pine used to seal the ropes.

From the Mary Rose, we walked 100 yards to another naval era, to visit Admiral Horatio Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory. A brass plaque marks the spot where he was fatally wounded by a French sniper during the Battle of Trafalgar and below deck is the spot where he is said to have died uttering the words “Kiss me Hardy” to his flag captain.

Fitting in the nautical theme, our visit included a private tour of Southampton Harbour, where we marvelled at five majestic cruiseliners, and visited the Titanic’s last berth. Lunch was at the Grand Cafe in South Western House, where the ill-fated liner’s first-class passengers would have stayed before setting off.

Flying back, my thoughts returned to the archer and what a privilege it was to have made his acquaintance.

It is a day trip that should be on all bucket lists.