The Mary Rose, a carrack that had served Henry VIII for more than three decades, was the flagship of Vice-Admiral Sir George Carew when a French fleet entered the Solent in July 1545. As she advanced against the French galleys on the evening of July 19, she heeled over in a breeze and sank, most likely because water poured through her open lower gunports. Carew died with his ship, and only 35 to 40 of her crew survived.
The Mary Rose was one of the first large warships built for Henry VIII's navy, ordered soon after he took the throne in 1509, and she served as a flagship in his early wars against France. Rebuilt in 1536, she was still in front-line service in 1545, when Francis I sent a large fleet under Admiral Claude d'Annebault to invade England.
The two fleets met in the Solent, the strait between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight, on July 18 and 19. Toward evening on the 19th, as the Mary Rose advanced, she heeled sharply and went down. Contemporaries blamed a crew that had forgotten to close the lower gunports after firing; the true cause is still debated. The French, short of supplies and struggling with illness and a leaking flagship, abandoned the invasion three days later.
The wreck was located in 1971 and raised on October 11, 1982, in one of the most complex and expensive salvage projects in maritime history. Her surviving hull and thousands of recovered objects, from weapons and rigging to the crew's personal belongings, are now displayed at the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth, an unmatched record of life aboard a Tudor warship.
Key people: Henry VIII, George Carew, Claude d'Annebault