How We Found the Mary Rose by Alexander McKee was packed with so much information about the famous Mary Rose and I was one of the lucky people to see it surface in October 1982, I was a 12 year old girl on my grandad's tug boat watching it surface in the Solent......An amazing day and one I will never forget.

Mary Rose was Henry VIII's beautiful flagship that dramatic sunk during an engagement with the French fleet in July 1545. This happened under the very eyes of King Henry VIII. Over 400 years later Mary Rose was finally bought to the surface off the coast of Portsmouth.

Sadly this book had no photo's or illustrations within this book, which made this book too long and plain Jane kind of book.......A memorial day that needs to be celebrated........Sadly, This book did not do this - it was just Black and white throughout.........A book that would not catch my eye - only if I wanted to learn more about Mary Rose! But some photo's would have made this book a 5 star book...........The cover is beautiful but did not match the inside of this book!

Big Thank you to Netgalley and Sapere Books for my Arc.

This is a new edition of the original telling of how the Mary Rose was found. Written in the first person, it’s a detailed account from the person who originally organised the salvage.

The book starts with a description of the Mary Rose going down before detailing previous rescue attempts. It then shares all of the trials and successes of the most recent attempt. Interspersed with the narrative are diary entries from other divers who worked on the dig. These are clearly broken up in the book so you can see who is speaking.

As mentioned this book is extremely detailed, describing a lot about diving, archaeology, maritime information and the geography of Portsmouth. This may be a bit overwhelming to some but if you have a great interest in the Mary Rose project it definitely won’t be.

This book only takes us up to the end of the dig & doesn’t even cover the salvage. I feel like we could now do with a follow up of raising her from the sea bed & the conservation project into the museum.

Thanks to the author, publishers & NetGalley for access to this arc in return for an honest review.

Wasn’t sure whether this book might be a bit dry but it’s not. It’s a very interesting account of how there Mary Rose was found and then excavated.. almost against the odds. Some nice quotes from those involved adds some different tones to the story. You need to keep an eye on some of the diving/excavation terms used throughout and will enable you to make sure you’re keeping in step with the story. Having seen the Mary Rose in it’s new home I’m really quite thankful the people who made that happen persevered for so long otherwise we’d be missing an important part of our history.

As a lover of all things Tudor, I knew I had to dive into this one as soon as I saw the title. I'm hoping to visit the Mary Rose in the museum on a trip this summer, so it was very cool to be able to read more about how she was found.

This is the fascinating story of Henry VIII's famous flagship, the Mary Rose, and author Alexander McKee's quest to find it. It is full of meticulous archival research on the Mary Rose's construction, sinking, and pre-20th-century salvage efforts, as well as first-hand testimonies of McKee's fellow divers, all interwoven with McKee's memories of the quest and the hard work of saving as much of the Mary Rose as possible for archeological study and analysis.

I took one star off because it ends just before the raising of the Mary Rose - even if the author didn't write it before his death, I think the book would be much stronger with an afterword/epilogue on the raising of the Mary Rose and/or briefly summarizing the Mary Rose's fate over the last 40 years, in which it was raised, conserved, and slowly settled into a purpose-built museum. But it's possible to find those materials elsewhere for a teacher trying to put together a lesson plan on the Mary Rose (the museum's website is a great starting place) so the book is still a great read even without quite bringing the story to a tidy close.

Thank you Netgalley and Sapere for access to this arc.

The book starts with a couple of chapters about the history of the Mary Rose - when she was built, what Henry VIII was trying to do with the English navy, and how shipbuilding was rapidly evolving in that time due to the introduction of an improvement in naval weaponry. The Mary Rose was retro-fitted at least once over the course of her life and though she was no longer the flagship of the navy, she was an important part of the English defense against the French in her last fight on 19th July, 1545. 


Sadly though, before the eyes of the king and court, the Mary Rose, while sailing into battle, heeled over and suddenly sank, taking most of her officers and crew to their deaths.

Alexander McKee had an idea that she was still there in the Solent and by a bit of stealth he got his diving club interested in finding her. They stalwartly continued over the years to dive on their own time and often used their own money to finance this. Bit by bit, year after year more people became interested, money and equipment were donated, and the divers and underwater archeologists devised new ways to use equipment and basically invented a new form of archeology. Some of this section goes into a bit more detail than an average armchair reader might be interested in. 

Setbacks -  wretched weather, equipment failures, health issues among the divers (including one fatal and near fatal events) bedeviled them but "Mac's" determination kept things together, kept people enthused and interested, and increased the profile of the endeavor.

What really struck me, while reading, was when divers felt a connection to those long dead Tudors who had built and sailed the Mary Rose. A shipwright noticed how his Tudor forebear had made a mistake in cutting a piece of wood and how that man had skillfully fixed it. They saw marks from adzes and other ancient tools no longer used which told of the fine craftsmanship of the day. McKee, whose father had been a Surgeon Commander in the RN, explored the perfectly preserved doctor's surgery complete with a little pot of ointment, medicine bottles, and instruments. They even recovered a bit of a book someone had been reading in 1545.


Because of her fate the Mary Rose actually survived. Had she not sunk, she would likely have eventually been broken up. But instead she has become an example of the then new shipbuilding techniques that were revolutionizing European navies. Her lost crew show how varied were those who sailed in Tudor England. The artifacts tell of shipboard life in the day. The book ends before the ship is raised (it was originally published in 1982) but there appear to be many more documentaries about the Mary Rose and I'm off to watch some of them. B

This was a really fascinating and well-written book about the Mary Rose, a Tudor warship that went down in the English Channel in 1545, and then Alexander McKee's journey to find it. The first part is the Tudor story of the ship as an active war vessel, and gives you a really good feel for how McKee was captured by the Mary Rose's story. He does a great job of bringing her (and the men who would have sailed on her) back to life. The rest of the book is his story: how he and a group of fellow divers gave up their days and searched for the Mary Rose, how they worked with others to develop the underwater archaeology that would serve best in the Channel (since the work being done in the Mediterranean was totally different conditions and everyone figured out that wouldn't work here!), and the trials and tribulations along the way. McKee is great about spreading the praise to all the team members and using their own words to help tell the story (even if they aren't complimentary to him), and the reader gets an amazing feel for how this discovery happened.

This book definitely makes me want to go to the Mary Rose museum in Southhampton in England and see the artifacts they found and learn more of the story of how it was raised, as well as see the actual ship and learn more about the conservation work that had to be done. I think anyone interested in history or archaeology will want to give this a try!

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review