THE MARY ROSE BELL

THE MARY ROSE BELL

This bronze bell is one of the few objects that stayed on the Mary Rose throughout her career. It was made in Malines near Antwerp, a town famous for casting bells. The Flemish inscription running round it reads: 'IC BEN GHEGOTEN INT YAER MCCCCCX'- I was made in the year 1510'-the year Henry VIII ordered the Mary Rose.  

It was rung to mark the passing of time, telling the men when to go on or off duty. 

The Mary Rose is a carrack-type warship of the English Tudor navy of King Henry VIII. After serving for 33 years in several wars against France, Scotland, and Brittany and after being substantially rebuilt in 1536, she saw her last action on 19 July 1545. While leading the attack on the galleys of a French invasion fleet, she sank in the Solent, the straits north of the Isle of Wight.

The wreck of the Mary Rose was rediscovered in 1971. It was raised in 1982 by the Mary Rose Trust, in one of the most complex and expensive projects in the history of maritime archaeology. The surviving section of the ship and thousands of recovered artefacts are of immeasurable value as a Tudor-era time capsule. The excavation and raising of the Mary Rose was a milestone in the field of maritime archaeology, comparable in complexity and cost only to the raising of the Swedish 17th-century warship Vasa in 1961.

Since the mid-1980s, while undergoing conservation, the remains of the hull have been on display at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.