2004 Diving Season - Page 3 of 4

6th August

Another beautiful day at sea. The visibility has improved and for the first time we can see the extent of many of the timbers and how some of these lie relative to one another. In order to try and fully understand the extent of the stem timber, we have today begun two trial trenches, one off the south of the timber and another off the north. At both ends the associated timbers are complex, as they lie close to the stem timber but are not attached to it. We now feel that the stem timber is lying on its side, therefore replicating the alignment of the keelson (and the portion of the hull lifted in 1982) but that a significant portion of lower bow structure tore away from this and fell to the west, less than a metre from where our excavations of the scour pit on the port side ended.

We are still finding a complex mass of timbers in the north east, where we would expect remains of the main, upper and castle decks in the bow. Excavation here is difficult, as many of the timbers are nearly vertical (replicating the heel of the rest of the ship) and we have to excavate around and through this forest of uprights. Our deepest part of the gridded area is now three metres below seabed, so our diving time is suffering. We are increasing our team by several members over this weekend to accommodate this. We are making wonderful progress, and the changes between one dive and another is marked. In general we are all doing only one long dive per day, 100 minutes at depth and 14 minutes decompression.

7th - 8th August

We are now over half way through our diving season and have to begin to think of how to re-bury the areas uncovered. Our stem timber is now 9.3 metres long and is still continuing. We have excavated a slot in a northeast/south west direction following this. This now resembles a canyon, with steeply sloping sides and a depth of nearly three metres below seabed level. We are not finding many objects associated with this. At the southern end, which would have attached to the rest of the ship, we now have two substantial areas of articulated structure, each section consisting of inner planking, frames, and outer hull planking. Both of these appear to have broken away from the stem timber and fallen outwards, towards the port side. We are finding a small number of Tudor objects in these areas, the base of a ceramic pot with a pinched edge was recovered today. The condition of the elements forming these sections is excellent, with clean sharp faces, suggesting rapid burial.

There is a marked contrast between the condition of the timbers in this area and those that we are finding at the north east of the site, which we feel may be upper hull structure. Much of this is eroded and often impossible to tell what the original item might have been. There are many more finds here, representing everything from modern to Tudor. We are progressing a small trench north eastwards to see how far the timbers extend.

So far we have undertaken over 230 hours of diving. This weekend we were joined by two more divers, both from the 79-82 team, Berit Mortlock and Peter Ewens. Amy Smith from the Mary Rose Museum came and helped process some of the timber after one of our ‘big lifts’ today. Paola Palma, one of the Mary Rose Trust archaeologists, came to look at the degraded timber, looking for infestation by shipworm and other marine borers.

Although conditions were slightly rougher today than previous days, this hasn’t affected our diving, we are all hoping that the weather stays good for the next week for this last push.

9 - 10 August

We have had an extremely productive two days. We have found the northern end of the stem piece, this curves in a gentle arc. The large sections of portside structure lying close to this are now surveyed in position, but the timbers continue to extend both southwards and westwards, with much of the western half of our 16m x 4 m grid now showing these exposed frames and inner planking.

We lifted one of the concretions which was hindering progress in the eastern portion of the gridded area, this proved to be a significant portion of a swivel gun with a bore of 45mm. There is more concretion still within the trench, and we think that this may be a large anchor. The attitude of this is such that we will probably not be able to lift it, there is too much overlying structure. The anchor is associated with a large number of structural timbers. A small concretion around the gun contained the pommel and handle of a sword.

The finds from this area are still mixed, we are obviously in an area which has been contaminated by previous excavations in the early 1970’s and 1980’s as well as objects which fell from the castle structure. A shaped decorative blind and partition planking were amongst the objects recovered from this area. Other objects include shot and partition planking which would have formed cabins either on the main or upper decks in the bow.

We were joined today by the Chief Executive of the Mary Rose Trust, Admiral Lippiett; Dr Margaret Rule, who directed the excavation between 1979 and 1982; Dr Mark Jones, Head of Collections at the Mary Rose Trust; and Charles Barker, Managing Director of Mary Rose Archaeological Services.

 

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