⚓ Shipwrecks Map

Mary Rose 1545

AnthonyRoll-2 Mary Rose
Image: Own scan. Photo by Gerry Bye. Original by Anthony Anthony., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Marker: recorded wreck position (Age of Sail).

Key facts

NameMary RoseWikidata label
Year lost1545Wikidata P793 significant event, point-in-time qualifier
EraAge of Sailderived from year
Ship typenaval vessel, carrackWikidata P31 instance of
Nationality / flagKingdom of England, United KingdomWikidata P137 operator → P17 country
OperatorEnglish Navy, Royal NavyWikidata P137 operator
ConflictItalian War of 1542–46 Un penesote, War of the League of Cambrai, Italian War of 1521–1526Wikidata P607 conflict
Sea / oceanEnglish ChannelNatural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon
Nearest coastEnglandofficial dataset
Position50.7639, -1.1042Historic England Protected Wreck Sites, listed latitude/longitude (OGL v3)
Protected WreckList entry 1000075Historic England
Designated1974-01-12Historic England
Restricted area28.26 haHistoric England
Grid referenceSZ 63271 96418Historic England

About the wreck

The Mary Rose was a carrack in the English Tudor navy of King Henry VIII. She was launched in 1511 and served for 34 years in several wars against France, Scotland, and Brittany. After being substantially rebuilt in 1536, she saw her last action on 19 July 1545. She led the attack on the galleys of a French invasion fleet, but sank off Spithead in the Solent, the strait north of the Isle of Wight.

The wreck of the Mary Rose was located in 1971 and was raised on 11 October 1982 by the Mary Rose Trust in one of the most complex and expensive maritime salvage projects in history. The surviving section of the ship and thousands of recovered artefacts are of significance as a Tudor period time capsule. The excavation and raising of the Mary Rose was a milestone in the field of maritime archaeology, comparable in complexity and cost to the raising of the 17th-century Swedish warship Vasa in 1961. The Mary Rose site is designated under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 by statutory instrument 1974/55. The wreck is a Protected Wreck managed by Historic England.

The finds include weapons, sailing equipment, naval supplies, and a wide array of objects used by the crew.

Diving & visiting

This is a designated Protected Wreck under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973. Under the Act, diving on or otherwise interfering with the wreck inside its restricted area requires a licence; see the Historic England list entry for details.

In mid-1836, a group of five fishermen caught their nets on timbers protruding from the bottom of the Solent. They contacted a diver to help them remove the hindrance, and on 10 June, Henry Abbinett became the first person to see the Mary Rose in almost 300 years. Later, two other professional divers, John Deane and William Edwards, were employed. Using a recently invented rubber suit and metal diving helmet, Deane and Edwards began to examine the wreck and salvage items from it.

The modern search for the Mary Rose was initiated by the Southsea branch of the British Sub-Aqua Club in 1965 as part of a project to locate shipwrecks in the Solent. The project was under the leadership of historian, journalist and amateur diver Alexander McKee. Another group led by Lieutenant-Commander Alan Bax of the Royal Navy, sponsored by the Committee for Nautical Archaeology in London, also formed a search team. Initially the two teams had differing views on where to find the wreck, but eventually joined forces. In February 1966 a chart from 1841 was found that marked the positions of the Mary Rose and several other wrecks.

Location

  • Recorded position: 50.7639, -1.1042 (Historic England Protected Wreck Sites, listed latitude/longitude (OGL v3); may be approximate)
  • Sea / ocean: English Channel
  • Nearest coast: England

Wreck positions on this site are for interest only and are not for navigation. Many wrecks are war graves or legally protected: never disturb human remains or remove artefacts, and check local law before diving.

OpenStreetMap

Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Mary Rose (revision 1374827655), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section and section(s) “Rediscovery in 19th century”, “Modern rediscovery”; condensed by selecting paragraphs and trimming at sentence boundaries; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.

Protected Wreck data © Historic England 2026. Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Wreck facts from Wikidata (CC0).

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Browse more: UK & Ireland wrecks · wrecks off England · English Channel · Age of Sail

Further reading