Sailing back in time with legendary Tudor ship

To many maritime enthusiasts, she only existed in history books, before a new museum opens for her this Friday. One of the largest and most famous ships in the English navy, the Mary Rose, built during the reign of Henry VIII, became a legend after sinking at a battle against France. The new museum, at the historic dockyard in south England\'s Portsmouth and in the shape of the bow of a black ship, was aimed at taking visitors to a journey through 500 years, so as to learn the story of this old warship. \"The dock is where the original one was built by accident, so she is back where she was,\" said Rear-Admiral John Lippiett, chief executive of the Mary Rose Trust. While antique dealer, author and broadcaster John Bly noted that the new museum is \"the closest thing to time-travel.\" \"Tudor life surrounds you and welcomes you in,\" he said. ENGLISH POMPEII Dubbed as the \"English Pompeii\" by British historian David Starkey, Mary Rose was built in 1510 commissioned by the newly crowned King Henry VIII.X The ship was launched the next year and then became the \"noblest ship of sail.\" It was one of the earliest warships to bear gunports and fought three battles against France. Mary Rose met its doom on July 19, 1545 at the Battle of the Solent, when it was leading the attack when water poured into the gunports. Out of some 400 crew members, only 35 survived. In the following hundreds of years, the ship had laid quietly at the bottom of the sea, despite occasional recovery of guns and other items. What was known as the world\'s largest underwater excavation was carried out in 1982. About 60 million people worldwide watched the wreck being raised live on TV. \"The Mary Rose sank on her starboard side, leaving the port side to be slowly destroyed by erosion and by marine animals, fungi and bacteria,\" said Alexandra Hildred, maritime archaeologist who first dived on the Mary Rose in 1979. The starboard side, however, was buried in the mud, which protected it from underwater currents and destructive organism. Therefore, the museum \"created a mirror image\" of the other half of the ship, as Lippiett put it, where \"objects were put back where they were,\" he said. Walking along the galleries, visitors could see the artifacts arranged on one side, while the hull of the ship towering on the other through windows. The atmospheric sound of gun and sea could form an illusion that one has traveled back to the Tudor times. But conservation of the ship hasn\'t finished. Lippiett disclosed that restoration of the ship cost 35 million pounds (about 53.5 million U.S. dollars), with 8 million going to the final phase. \"The final stage was environmentally controlled drying,\" said Professor Mark Jones, Head of Collection and Conservation, who has been working for Mary Rose for three decades. Temperature and humidity were strictly controlled and closely monitored, as research found that 55 percent relative humidity and 20 degrees centigrade were most favorable. Jones said that the process would take four to five years. After that the internal walls will be removed and visitors will be able to have a completely unobstructed view of the hull. As for now, he said, \"it really will be a unique chance for visitors to see our dedicated team preserve such a treasured artifact as they can see through windows into the \'hotbox\' containing the Mary Rose when the new museum opens.\" SNAPSHOTS OF TUDOR PEOPLE The hull is not the only attraction for visitors. In the galleries, people could see various items recovered from the wreckage. According to Lippiett, they have found the remains of 179 victims when the ship sank. Based on forensic science and osto-archaeology on the skulls and skeletons, facial reconstructions of seven members of the crew were finished, including an archer, a carpenter, a cook, a master gunner, an officer, a purser and a stranger, possibly another gunner or archer. The cook\'s skeleton is virtually complete, suggesting that he was a man in his 30s, about 1.68 meters tall and with heavy, strong bones. He was responsible for feeding over 400 men and preparing more elaborate meals for the officers. Evidence from his ribs and backbone suggested he spent much of his working life bent over. The carpenter, a strong and muscular man, was stationed below deck during battles so that he could repair any damage to the ship immediately. His teeth and bones showed that he could only chew on the right side and the man lived with arthritis in the spine and ribs. The archer, standing at 1.78 meters tall and in his early 20s, had particularly strong legs. The middle of his spine was twisted, and one of his right finger bones had grooves on the inside. These features were made by repeatedly pulling a longbow string. Although a strong man, the gunner had his neck bones degenerated and the base of his spine compacted. This might be result of years of hauling guns into position and lifting the heavy gunpowder chambers. The objects found near these skeletons completed their personal stories. Near the cook, hundreds of bowls and cooking tools were recovered, with one bowl and a tankard bore graffiti of perhaps the man\'s name \"Ny Cop,\" or \"Ny Coep.\" The longbow used by the archer told people for the first time what the medieval longbow was like, because there was no evidence available before. The bow was longer than imagined, and we now understand that archers could pull almost twice the weight that had previously been thought. PICTURES OF TUDOR LIFE Other items could give visitors a rough picture of Tudor life. From a menu, Lippiett said that the cook \"had fish on the day he died,\" because it was Wednesday when the ship sank. \"Tudor people had healthier food than we do now,\" he added. In a barber surgeon\'s cabin, pewter items were found, which suggested that the surgeon was a man of high status, as pewter was relatively expensive at that time. The Tudor shoes looked like modern-day slippers, but there was no designated left or right shoe. If one shoe started to wear out more than the other, the owner could swap them over. Among the 10 plus musical instruments on the Mary Rose, two fiddles, a bow, still shawm, three tabor pipe and a tabor were retrieved. Considering the rarity of surviving instruments from that period, these items could fill the gap of people\'s knowledge of what had existed then. Due to their small sizes, only six personal spoons were recovered, three pewter and three wooden. The pewter ones belonged to officers while the wooden spoons, made of maple, were used by ordinary crew. The use of spoon revealed class distinction at that time. The new museum aroused great interest from the public. More than five weeks ahead of the opening, it had already sold 500 tickets, according to Lippiett. \"During the first day, the number of visitors may reach 2,000,\" he said. Mary Rose also left visitors a mystery along with all the findings: why did it sink at all? Lippiett had an explanation. \"Henry VIII added more and more guns to the ship, until it had become overloaded,\" he said. But there were other guesses too: could it be hit by the cannonball, or capsized in the choppy sea? A study even suggested that the accident was caused by mis-operation, as 60 percent of crewmen were of south European origin. The mystery might be solved one day, or never. At this time, however, what Lippiett wanted to say was \"when their world ended, our story began.\"