Over 450 years ago, the Mary Rose, King Henry VIII’s favorite warship, capsized in the Solent, sinking to its watery grave before firing a single shot against the French navy. While the ship and its 500-man crew would not return to the surface for centuries, a new effort is now underway to ensure the legacy of its incredible recovery lives on.
On July 24, 2025, the Mary Rose Museum and the University of Portsmouth announced a “race against time” to digitize over 600 deteriorating video tapes containing original underwater footage of the ship’s salvage in 1982. The project aims to save a priceless visual record of what remains the world’s largest underwater recovery of its kind.
The original footage, much of it unseen since it was first recorded, captures the moment divers discovered historical items like cannons and the ship’s hull. The tapes, which are now over 40 years old, have begun to degrade, and experts fear the oxide on the tape is “dissolving as we speak,” making the digitization project critical to preserving a key part of British maritime history.
The ship’s salvage in 1982 was a massive, globally-televised event, attracting an audience of over 60 million people. Today, the Mary Rose and its collection of over 19,000 artifacts are housed in a dedicated museum in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, offering unparalleled insight into Tudor life.
The new digitization project serves as a powerful reminder that history is not static; it is a living narrative that continues to be discovered and protected. By preserving this fragile video archive, historians and the public will be able to relive the moment the Mary Rose returned home and continue to learn from the treasures she held.
