Popular imagination inspired by movies and paintings shows the great Tudor explorers stood on the upper decks of their ships, one hand on the ship’s wheel as they search for foreigners to shoot at. However, the famous ship’s wheel, used alongside the anchor to represent all things maritime, wasn't in...

The Black Death hit Portsmouth several times in the city's history, with particularly nasty outbreaks in 1349, 1558, 1625 and 1665/6, but we're going to take a look at the outbreak that hit Henry VIII's fleet in September 1545.

Here in the archives, myself and the other Collections Volunteers have been scanning away and have recently reached our 60,000 digitised images milestone! As we make our way through the (hundreds of) film strips, we’re continuing to see Tudor objects make their way from the bottom of the Solent...

As well as the human inhabitants, the Mary Rose was home to a number of animals, some welcome, others not so welcome…

On a wooden ship there aren’t many more important jobs than that of carpenter, and while the Mary Rose appears to have had a small team of them on board, the most important of all was the Master Carpenter, who owned a cabin on the main deck.

This cabin is...

Would you believe that some things you might have heard about the Mary Rose might not be 100% true?

Based on one of our Third Thursday Tours

In Tudor England school wasn't the same as it is today. Young boys would go to school as infants to get a basic education, but as soon as they were old enough to work, they were on their own. Of course, if you were rich you could go to a...

Napoleon Bonaparte is popularly quoted as saying “An army marches on its stomach”, and even though he wasn’t born until long after the Mary Rose sank, the crew of that warship knew the importance of being well fed.

Among the 19,000 objects recovered from the wreck of the Mary Rose,...

The Anthony Roll, which features one of only two contemporary depictions of the Mary Rose, shows the Mary Rose with a boat being towed along behind.