Mary Rose Raising: 30th Anniversary

October 11th 2012 marks thirty years since the nation was glued to televisions watching the wreck of the Tudor warship, the Mary Rose, break the surface of the Solent.

More than 600 volunteer divers and many more volunteers on shore helped with the work as the ship was excavated, recorded, and decks, cabins, and bulkheads were surveyed and brought ashore timber by timber.

In total over 25,000 finds were brought ashore and almost 28,000 dives were carried out.

Starting the anniversary celebrations will be a boat trip and evening talk on Thursday October 11th 2012 from 3pm-7.30pm.

The boat trip  will leave Portsmouth Historic Dockyard to visit the wreck site in the Solent. A Tudor musician will play traditional music on embarking the boat and again at the wreck site where there will also be a ceremonial longbow salute by the Purbrook Archers and a complimentary glass of wine to salute the human endeavour of the raising.

In the evening there will be an anniversary talk at the Mary Rose Story, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, from Christopher Dobbs who was one of the salvage diving team in 1982 and still working at the Mary Rose Trust as Head of Interpretation for the new museum.

The 30th anniversary will then continue into 2013 as history will be made once again when the Mary Rose Trust opens a new museum at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, bringing the hull and many of the 19,000 artefacts that were raised with her together once more.

The new museum will be the most significant development to take place in the Historic Dockyard in a decade. The £35 million heritage project to build an internationally-renowned museum will reunite the Mary Rose hull together with her collection of artefacts, placed in context, in a brand new boat-shaped museum.

A flythrough has been produced  showing key aspects of the new museum and also gives a preview through to when the conservation is  complete:

The video gives insights into how the Mary Rose will be displayed and how the personal stories of the crew will be highlighted as the collection is reunited with the ship for the first time since her raising.

These displays are shown on the flythrough as well as the views through windows into the conservation "hot box". Inside this space, the tubes supplying the air to dry the ship will be seen until 2016 when at last the 30 year conservation programme will be complete and the hull will be fully revealed once more.

The new museum will be an elliptical 'jewel box', placing the hull at the centre with galleries running the length of the ship, each at a level corresponding to a deck levels on the ship. Artefacts will be set out in these galleries so visitors can see what the decks would have looked like moments before the ship sank.