Tudor warship now part of museum
Despite a £23 million handout from the Heritage Lottery Fund the custodians of the Mary Rose Trust will be charging a staggering £72 per family ticket to visit the Tudor warship when she re-opens for tourists tomorrow.
The ship was raised from the seabed in 1982 and has had a museum built around her, exhibiting her contents from nit combs – complete with petrified nits – to longbows.its Personal belongings such as wooden eating bowls, leather shoes, musical instruments as well as two tonne guns are on show.
Effigies of crew members are being brought to life through forensic science: visitors can come face to face with a carpenter, cook and archer and even ‘Hatch’ the ship’s dog.
The new Mary Rose Museum will open at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard – the very same dockyard at which the warship was built over 500 years ago.
The opening marks 30 years since the year the hull of Mary Rose was raised from the Solent in 1982 and 437 years after she sank on 19 July. The ship sank, with the loss of 450 crew, in full view of King Henry VIII while leading the attack on a French invasion fleet during the Battle of The Solent.