Time travel

40th anniversary of the raising of the Mary Rose royal warship

It’s 40 years since the Mary Rose, Henry VIII’S favourite warship, was raised from the seabed off the coast of Portsmouth.

During the Battle of the Solent in 1545, the vessel was part of an English fleet trying to stop French ships landing on the Isle of Wight, but sank before firing a single shot.

The search for and discovery of the Mary Rose was thanks to the late Alexander Mckee, who in 1965, with the Southsea branch of the British Sub-aqua Club, initiated ‘Project Solent Ships’ to investigate wrecks in the Solent.

Using sonar scans, the team discovered a strange shape. Volunteer divers explored the area and the climax came when diver Percy Ackland found three of the port frames of the Mary Rose in 1971.

The ship was then excavated before raising the hull in October 1982.

Heavily televised at the time, it was the subject of documentaries as well as a Blue Peter TV special. The warship was then re-floated and is now preserved at the award-winning Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard.

In the run-up to this autumn’s milestone anniversary, visitors are invited to become Time Detectives to learn more about the story via a ‘world first’ multisensory augmented reality game.

Downloadable at home from the IOS App Store and Google Play Store, Time Detectives: The Mystery of the Mary Rose immerses players in the sights and sounds on board the ship almost five centuries ago. Visitors can use their mobile phone as a ‘magical spyglass’ to complete a mission for King Henry VIII by collecting clues.

While the app can be used anywhere, when used in the museum itself, visitors also get to experience the smells of life back then, thanks to backpacks that automatically trigger scents.

The AR game adds to the highly acclaimed 1545 – When Their World Ended, an audio-visual walk-through experience opened last year. maryrose. org/40/, visit-hampshire.co.uk