Our trip to the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth was both inspiring, really interesting, and great fun! (On the bus, we ate blue sweets so we had blue tongues when we arrived!) We started the day by doing a fantastic workshop. We were first given a Latin task to work out what the motto on one of the cannons said. It said Henry VIII was King of England, Ireland and France and was Head of the Church of England. We then looked a copies of things found on the Mary Rose and had to work out what they were. We learned how many things are different nowadays from how they were back in Tudor times in terms of medicine, navigation, warfare and ordinary life. Some Tudor objects were similar to things we use today such as pepper grinders but many were completely different … thank goodness Medicine is not the same!

We then had really enjoyable a tour of the museum and got to see the Mary Rose itself. It is amazing that so much of it has survived! The museum was full of really interesting things that the divers found such as coins, cannons, combs, musical instruments, bones from humans and the carpenter’s dog, and countless other things. They found archers’ bows and daggers, but some of them had worn away in places so they replaced the missing parts with plastic so that we could see what they would have looked like. Also, we got to feel a rope from the anchor which had been preserved.

We had a wonderful day, and would like to thank all the teachers and the staff at the Mary Rose Museum for making it such a fantastic day.

Freya Thorne-Henderson and Juliet Lamb, First Year