Mary Rose – Digitisation Blog – July 2017 Page 1 | The Mary Rose
Mary Rose – Digitisation Blog – July 2017
Collections | 08 Aug, 2017 | The Collections Team
Digitisation continues...

July has been a very busy month on the Mary Rose Digitisation Project. At the end of the month, we reached the major milestone of 7,500 digitised images. This marks the half way point towards our Phase 1 target of 15,000 digitised images. A huge congratulations to the Collections Volunteers for their enthusiasm and support towards getting to this stage in the project!

Also this month, we waved a sad say goodbye to Andrew, one of the Collections Volunteers who has finished his volunteering time with us – we wish him all the best for the future!

Ship Hall Visits

At the end of the month (and into early August) the Collections Volunteers had the opportunity to see behind the scenes at the Mary Rose Museum and visit the Mary Rose herself – up close.

A huge amount of work and equipment goes into providing a suitable and stable environment for the hull. In particular there are tight controls on the temperature and relative humidity. Brian Robinson (Maintenance Co-Ordinator and Museum Building Manager) talked us through the three huge air handling units that are dedicated to maintaining the necessary conditions and how they feed the conditioned air into the Ship Hall at the Museum.

Dr. Eleanor Schofield (Head of Conservation and Collections Care) then guided us through to the Mary Rose hull and shared some fascinating insights into a few of the challenges that go along with looking after an object on this scale. Needless to say – it is not an easy task!

Seeing the hull on the cradle and up close (after seeing it in the archived images we have been digitising) was a great opportunity to reflect on how far the Mary Rose has come since it was lifted on 11th October 1982. It was a great motivator for the ongoing digitisation project!

Digitisation highlights

We have a few really interesting images to share this month. The first few show how the Mary Rose was brought to Dry Dock 3 where it currently still sits within the Mary Rose Museum (and where the Collections Volunteers saw it during the Ship Hall visit):

Look ahead

We are still looking forward to see what other images and information the archives will offer as we continue the digitisation. Up until now, we have been digitising the 35mm slides. However, plans are now underway to prepare for the next type of photographic material we will be working on. Watch this space…

Alastair Miles

Collections Manager