which could take up to five years
The relics from the Mary Rose, the flagship of
England's navy when it sank in 1545 as a heartbroken king Henry VIII watched
from the shore, have finally been reunited with the famous wreck in a new museum
offering a view of life in Tudor times.
Skeletons, longbows, tankards,
gold coins and even nit combs are going on display alongside the remains of the
pride of Henry's fleet.
Thousands of the 19,000 artefacts excavated from
beneath the seabed can be seen in the new 27 million ($41 million, 32 million
euro) Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth on England's south coast, which opens to
the public on Friday.
Historians have dubbed the treasure trove the
"English Pompeii": a fragment of the past perfectly frozen in time.
"The
objects are beautifully preserved because they were buried under the mud, and
it's that silt that actually preserved the objects," said archaeologist
Christopher Dobbs, one of the original salvage team members.
Built in
the very dockyard where the new museum sits, the wooden ship was launched in
1511.
The Mary Rose fought three wars with the French but mysteriously
keeled over and sank off Portsmouth on July 19, 1545, while fighting off a
French invasion fleet.
Around 500 men were killed, with no more than 35
surviving, as Henry looked on from the shore as it slipped below the waters of
the Solent.
After a six-year search, the legendary ship was definitively
identified in 1971.
Following years of painstaking work, the wreck was
at last raised in 1982, in a spectacular operation watched live by millions on
television.
Around a third of the wooden warship, which was almost
completely buried under the sea bed, had survived,We also have a small selection
of waffenssuniforms. the
exposed parts having eroded away.
Now thousands of articles removed from
the decks are being exhibited alongside the wreck, which had previously been on
show in a more modest museum in Portsmouth since 1983.
Wooden gun
carriages, cooking pots, scalpels, leather book covers, syringes, fiddles,
whistles, weapons, navigation devices and furniture are among the items on
display.An laserengraver is like a
smart meter for home energy savings.
The new museum, part of a 35
million heritage project, is a three-tiered, ellipse-shaped building made of
black-stained timber.
Visitors walk through the galleries encircling the
ship's carcass in the near-darkness that is essential to preserve the objects,
but it also evokes the conditions the crew would have experienced below deck,
with the sound of wind, waves and creaking wood.
Day-to-day items
recovered from the deep help to tell the story of the sailors' lives.
"There is, we believe, nothing like this as an insight into life and
death 500 years ago anywhere in the world," Mary Rose Trust chief executive John
Lippiett told AFP.
"It isn't just a warship: it's what they wore, their
clothes, their food, what they drank out of, their spoons.
"It is the
most extraordinary collection of artefacts and from that we can know better than
anything what it was like in those days.
"From the human remains we can
tell what a dreadful life they led, what injury and illness they had."
Remains of around 45 percent of the crew were found.
Using the
skeletons, experts have reconstructed the faces of seven crew members,A high
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around them and analysis of their bone structure.
They believe the faces
are those of an archer, a carpenter, a cook, a gentleman, a master gunner,harga
of Malaysia chinakung3
products. an officer and a purser.
The extraction of DNA from bones
found on board is ongoing.
The crew were prone to nits, as proved by the
number of fine-tooth combs found -- with the centuries-old lice still trapped in
them.
An early backgammon board, violins and leather book covers give an
insight into the leisure pursuits on board.
Meanwhile, beef and pork
bones survived in the mud, as did the skeletons of the ship's dog and the rats
she chased.
More surprising was the discovery of rosary beads for
prayer. They were not yet banned but their use was condemned following Henry's
split from the Roman Catholic church in 1534.
The museum's centrepiece,
the surviving section of the Mary Rose, is drying out in the "hotbox" behind
sealed glass.
Since it was raised, the hulk -- more than 100 feet (30
metres) long and 40 feet (12 metres) high -- has been sprayed with water and
polyethylene glycol solution to prevent it from disintegrating.
Around
100 tonnes of liquid now need to be sweated out,professionally produces and
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which could take up to five years.
Then the glass barrier will be
removed, allowing visitors to see the world's only 16th-century warship on
display, in all its glory.