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Not Just the Tudors
Mary Rose & the Battle of the Solent
00:48:15
Prof. Suzannah Lipscomb and Dr. Dominic Fontana explore a pivotal moment in Tudor military history and ask why the Mary Rose sank?
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- [00:00]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb. If you'd like Not Just the Tudors ad free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to historyhit with a historyhit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my own recent two part series A World Torn the Dissolution of the Monasteries and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward/subscribe.
- [00:33]
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- [02:36]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Most of us probably know something about the Spanish Armada of 1588, when 130 Iberian ships set off to pick up 30,000 soldiers from Flanders in order to invade Elizabeth I's England. We've covered their failure to do so in great depth on Not Just the Judas before with Professor Geoffrey Parker. I'd highly recommend you check out that episode. But in 1545, England faced an invasion threat that was potentially much more serious than the Spanish Armada, from a much larger fleet coming a much shorter distance, with armies twice the size of those that Henry VIII could mount against them already on board. This was the Battle of the Solent, which we remember chiefly for the fact that One of Henry VIII's warships, the Mary Rose, sank. Amazingly, the hull of the Mary Rose was preserved by the silt of the Solent seabed, along with the skeletons of many of her doomed crew and their personal possessions. But 480 years after she sank. Let us dig a little deeper. Listener Charles Taylor Stokes, who lives near Portsmouth, wrote to me, saying, we all know that the Mary Rose sank, but what happened in the rest of the Battle of the Solent? Particularly what was its outcome? Here's how one contemporary French observer, Martin du Bellay, described the battle from the Isle of Wight.
- [04:35]
Martin du Bellay
Because the wind fell calm and the tide served the enemy, he brought out of Portsmouth Haven many ships of burden and others of war, which, being towed by boats, molested our galleys with continual cannon shot, whereas our own great ships, by reason of the tide and want of wind, could not advance to succour the galleys. Nevertheless, the seigneur Danburg maintained his ground until night, when, having performed that which he had been commanded, he retired, leaving the villages ablaze in sundry places. The day following, the French army renewed the attempt. Yet the enemy, better prepared than before and reinforced with fresh troops, drew up in order of battle both by land and by sea, so that the wind still failing us and the current favouring him, it was thought meet not to hazard further the King's galleys. Whereupon the admiral re embarked the men whom he had landed and withdrew his whole force towards the open sea. The English likewise retiring unto the haven after the ebb. In this manner ended the descent upon the Isle of Wight. And albeit some of ours affirm that the great ship called the Mary Rose, esteemed the flower of England, had been sunk by the cannon of our galleys. Yet others held, and with greater likelihood that she perished through her own imprudence, having healed over while turning with her lower gun ports open.
- [05:59]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
But just how serious was this threat of invasion by the French? And how did the battle play out that day? 19-7-1545. I'm delighted to be joined by Dr. Dominic Fontana, a geographer from the University of Portsmouth. He's been closely involved with the Mary Rose Maritime Archaeological Project for the last 40 years. He's made several films and podcasts. Indeed, he's been on this podcast before. I'm Professor Suzanne Lipscomb and this is not just the Tudors from history hit. Dominic, welcome back.
- [06:34]
Dr. Dominic Fontana
Thank you for inviting me, Susanna.
- [06:36]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
It's always a joy to talk to you. So let's start by thinking a bit about context and background, because the question that we really need to ask is why were the French invading? So what had been going on up until this point?
- [06:50]
Dr. Dominic Fontana
Well, Henry had certainly managed to annoy the French quite considerably. Francois I was very upset by Henry's invasion of France in the summer of 1544, the year before the Battle of the Solent. And Henry had really sort of been thinking about this for quite some time because he had amassed a large amount of money from the dissolution of the monasteries, so he was flush with cash and in a position where he felt he needed to exert his influence over France and to make a proper bid for the throne of France, which, after all, he always claimed that he had. He was King of France and therefore he should have been able to take France for his realm. So in the summer of 1544, Henry had put together an army of about 40,000 men and conveyed them over from Dover, over to the English possession of Calais that was at that time held by the English. It was heavily fortified. The English army could be discharged from the ships at deep water quay sides and was able then to muster up and organise themselves to move inland into France at that stage. Originally, Henry had wanted to do this in conjunction with Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain. Charles had made his own peace with Francois before Henry was able to mount the invasion. So Henry had found himself in a position where he had a large army paid for and that would still need to be paid for, and was sitting out in the English possession of Calais. So he decided then that the army would continue on and do some typical work of invading France, of taking some territory. So they headed off across country from Calais to the town of Boulogne, which they laid siege to during July and August of 1544. Henry went and joined his troops in that endeavour and he very much felt that he was leading his army from the front, doing that really powerful warrior prince thing, being there with his troops, living under canvas, roughing it with the men. He wasn't actually roughing it, but he was living in the lap of luxury in really splendid tents. But it's one of his last hurrahs, I suppose, an adventure overseas with his men, with his knights and so on. So really going for the grand military finale, I suppose.
- [09:59]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And there's something about the fact that he is doing this late in his life. I don't want to say that, really, Cause he's about the same age as I am by this point, but he was in his, you know, 20 years earlier. He'd attacked France as a young man and full of that sort of youthful hopefulness. And here he is, as you say, this kind of last hurrah. And it goes really well.
- [10:22]
Dr. Dominic Fontana
Well, yeah, they managed to besiege the town of Boulogne and really shot the place up a bit. The English troops ransacked the town once they were able to gain entrance to it, which they did by the middle of September in 1544. It was a prolonged and really quite nasty fight. No two ways about it. The French in Boulogne didn't want to be taken by the English and really stuck out as long as they possibly could. But one of the things we do know is that Henry's court were very proud of the way that they'd organised the logistics of the operation. They had plenty of guns, they had plenty of ammunition, large amounts of powder. They'd been making arrangements right across Europe for the delivery of mercenary troops, particularly from Germany. We certainly know that some of them didn't actually turn up in spite of having been paid for. Not everything went Henry's way, but he did capture Boulogne. In doing so, that really upset Francois I, King of France, and that is what tipped off the process of the invasion attempt on England in 1545.
- [11:48]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So this evasion attempt, it is with a huge French fleet. Tell me about the nature of the fleet that Francois amassed and who was in charge of it. Was he an experienced naval commander?
- [12:02]
Dr. Dominic Fontana
Yes, as far as I can tell, he was indeed an experienced naval commander. The story of putting the fleet together is probably quite a complex one, and we haven't yet been able to find all the necessary documentary evidence to be able to back this up. But we do know quite a few things about what happened when putting the fleet together. The French fleet that tried to invade England in July 1545, comprised of about 225 ships. That's an awful lot of ships, and you have to arrange those to come together at one point to rendezvous before you start to make the final attack. And the fleet included ships that had been sent by the Pope and others that had come from both Genoa in northern Italy and Venice, either side of the Italian peninsula. So some of the ships, probably about 25 or so, were Mediterranean galleys that had sailed all the way down the Adriatic and the other side of Italy, across the Mediterranean, out through the Straits of Gibraltar, all the way up past the Iberian Peninsula. We know that they called in at Lisbon because it's recorded that they picked up a pilot to help them navigate across the Bay of Biscay and up to join the French fleet in the English Channel, probably at Le Havre. Some of the ships had come, well, best part of 2000 miles. In order to join this fight in the Solent, that takes a lot of organization, a great deal of money, and really quite a lot of letters that would have to go backwards and forwards between the Pope and the other suppliers of ships and men. So what we end up with is that by the time it comes to July 1545, the French have amassed an army of 30,000 soldiers on 225 ships. They've brought galleys all the way from Italy. They've brought together a lot of artillery, field artillery. They've brought shot powder, food, money. All of those things have to be organized and brought together. So Francois had not stinted at all on putting his force into action. On the other hand, we've got Henry in England, and he's faced with a really serious problem at this point, because his proper army, the army that he invaded France with, is still in France. They're being pressed very hard by the French around the outskirts of the town of Boulogne that he captured the year before. So he hasn't really got his proper army in England. He's got militia that can be raised from the various counties, but they're not fully equipped, they're not fully paid, they're not fully fed, and they're not fully Trained either. So they will be able to do something to resist a French invasion, but possibly not that much.
- [15:28]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So this is a pretty serious situation, isn't it?
- [15:31]
Dr. Dominic Fontana
Absolutely is. It was at a point where Henry's kingdom really was hanging by a thread. With such a force sailing across the English Channel with the intention of landing a large army such that they would be able to take England, to take Henry's crown, they'd have a good chance.
- [15:54]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Can you talk me through that strategy in terms of what are they planning to do? Where are they planning to land? We have a sense of this when it comes to the Spanish Armada. Say, what's Francois's intention?
- [16:04]
Dr. Dominic Fontana
Well, we know that the French sailed across the English Channel and appeared off the eastern end of the Isle of Wight on Saturday 18 July 1545. Before they arrived, they had to assemble in love. When they assembled, Francois came on board the flagship and had a dinner with his commanders. Unfortunately, after they'd finished the dinner, the flagship caught fire and was burnt down to the water line, killing many people because of the guns and the powder exploding as the ship burnt. So there was a very bad omen to the whole of the episode at that point. Now, whether it's then that Francois decided he wasn't going to come with his fleet and with his army, we don't know. But he didn't. He stayed in France. Francois stayed firmly on French soil. He put his admiral, the Admiral of France, Claude d', Annabeau, in charge of both the fleet and the military operations. And under his command, the French fleet set sail and arrived off St Helens Point on the eastern end of the Isle of Wight, on the afternoon of Saturday 18th July 1545. Now, Henry at that time was in Portsmouth leading his troops. Francois was not leading his troops. Whether that has a bearing on things, I don't really know. What we do know again, is that Cordanabo was really quite a well practiced individual. I think he would have known very much what he was trying to do. However, the tactic of bringing 30,000 soldiers, field artillery and probably some cavalry on big ships is fraught with difficulties because you have to get them ashore. Now, a big ship requires a deep water quayside where you can come in, moor alongside and discharge your cargo of soldiers and equipment onto the quayside down gangplanks. That should have worked, except that they'd have to take an English port with some facilities to be able to do that. In the Solent, there are two obvious places, one is Portsmouth and the other is Southampton. But both require that you get your big ships up through really quite tight channels, which are defended with castles and guns, into the ports so that you can discharge the troops. That's tricky, very tricky at the best of times.
- [19:09]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Tell me about the sailent. I want to benefit from your geographical knowledge here. I mean, how easy is it to navigate the tidal currents, the sands, in a sailing ship?
- [19:19]
Dr. Dominic Fontana
Well, if you stand at the shores of the Solent and you look across, it looks like a very broad spread of water, several miles wide at parts. But there are only a few places where you can get more than about 4 or 5 meters of water at all states of the tide. So you have to be quite specific about where you're sailing. The tidal currents are very strong and the tidal range that's from low tide to high tide in height, is really quite big, can easily be over 5 meters range in height. So you have to know what you're doing. Undoubtedly, the French did know what they were doing as far as the seabed topography goes, but it's definitely not an easy thing to do. To get into Portsmouth Harbour, you have to sail straight at Southsea Castle as your first port point, and then make a left turn and run along the shoreline and through the very, very narrow harbour entrance at Portsmouth, all of which was heavily defended with guns and with forts that Henry had been desperately building over the previous year or two. If you're going to go to Southampton, you've got the same problem. That is, you have to go into the Solent, navigate through the reasonably deep water and then make a sharp right turn at the entrance to Southampton water and then up Southampton water to the quaysides at Southampton. The problem with that is that there are a number of castles and forts along the way, all equipped with artillery. It would not have been an easy manoeuvre to make. So I don't think that the French had really thought that part of the battle through enough to be able to make the landing. If they used small boats and put the troops into small boats and then rowed them onto beaches, yeah, they'd probably be able to do that. But the problem there is that even small numbers of defenders will be able to pick them off as they land in 20 or 30 men at a time, it's much easier to do that. So that would have been quite a difficult thing to have done.
- [21:41]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So you're saying the French plan was not a terribly good plan?
- [21:44]
Dr. Dominic Fontana
Basically, yes. They'd put an enormous amount of effort into assembling the army and the fleet, but they hadn't thought the Detail through.
- [21:56]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Can we talk a bit more about the nature of each fleet and the difference that the different types of ships made? Because you've mentioned the galleys, but perhaps there's a bit more to say about those. And tell me about the nature of the big ships as well.
- [22:11]
Dr. Dominic Fontana
Well, the big ships like the Mary Rose were large vessels. Mary rose was about 700 tons, equipped with broadside firing guns, lots of them. They would have been quite devastating in their effect if you got on the wrong side of the English ships. The same is true, but probably even more so of the large French ships, which were bigger and had more guns on them, possibly less manoeuvrable. Who knows? Difficult to tell. The other problem that's there with the English fleet is that many of the ships were really converted merchant vessels, probably only mounting one or two guns, a few guns, but not many. We have an example archaeologically of one of those kinds of vessels in the medieval Newport port ship, Newport in South Wales, which was excavated in the early 2000s and can be seen in Newport. It's in pieces, but the intention is to rebuild it to some degree. Now, that was a slightly earlier ship, but exactly the kind of merchant vessels that would have been deployed in the English fleet. The English did have a few galleys of their own. There were about four of them that they had. They as nimble as the Mediterranean galleys, nor were they probably equipped with as many guns. Now, the advantage that the Mediterranean galleys had is that they had about four or five big bronze guns mounted in the bows, firing directly forward. The English galleys, which were smaller, probably had one or two guns mounted in the bows, and that would have had a significant tactical advantage in the confined waters of the Solent. So there's a number of things to think about in how the ships would have been deployed. The French were quite capable seafarers. The Mediterranean galleys were a significant threat. And after the battle, we know that Henry was particularly concerned about getting the shipwrights at Portsmouth to convert some of the existing English ships to have forward facing guns and to be able to be rowed. There are a couple of letters that give us some indication of that. And the letter suggests that, well, the shipwrights would do this if they had the time, but they're far too too busy building things to help raise the Mary Rose. So these were ideas that were clearly in Henry VIII's head just after the battle. So he was thinking about these things militarily.
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- [26:29]
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- [28:15]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Sam. On 19 July 1545, King Henry VIII himself stood on the imposing stone battlements of Southsea Castle. He had rushed to Portsmouth with his Privy Council upon receiving intelligence that Francis I of France had assembled the most formidable invasion force ever to threaten English shores. More than 200 ships carrying 30,000 troops. The king's keen eyes, still sharp despite his declining health, surveyed his own modest fleet of just 80 vessels, vastly outnumbered, but not outmatched in his estimation. The night before, Henry had dined aboard his flagship, Great Harry, with his admirals, sharing what would prove to be his final meal with his trusted vice admiral, Sir George Carew, who he'd just appointed. As dawn broke on July 19, the king positioned himself at his newly constructed fortress, designed by his own hand to defend against precisely such an assault, knowing that the fate of England itself might well be decided in the waters spread before him. From his commanding vantage point atop South Sea Castle, Henry watched in mounting tension as the French galleys, sleek and menacing, glided into the eastern and mouth of the Solent. Under the still morning air, the King's hands may have gripped the stone parapet as his fleet lay becalmed and vulnerable, unable to maneuver against the wind. Independent enemy galleys that advance like sea warps towards his trapped vessels. But then, as morning turned to afternoon, as if answering his prayers, a fresh sea brewing breeze began to stir the waters, filling the sails of his great ships and allowing them to lumber forward to meet the French threat. Henry's heart must have swelled with pride as he witnessed the Mary Rose, one of his first commissioned warships, built at a cost equivalent to over £6.5 million in today's currency. Leading the charge against the enemy. With her distinctive high forecastle and stern cut castle and her imposing gun decks, the ship that bore the name of both the Virgin Mary and the Tudor Rose had been his constant companion during three decades of warfare, a floating symbol of his maritime ambitions and royal power. Dominic, what can we learn about the English military strategy? Thinking about who was on board the ships, were they hoping that they could fire at long distance? Were they planning to board the enemy ships? What were their intentions?
- [31:24]
Dr. Dominic Fontana
Well, again, we can tell that the English ships largely stayed put at their anchorages in the middle of the Solent on Spithead. That actually was probably the best thing they could do because if they sat there in the middle of the Solent, there was no way that the French could sail past them to get into either Portsmouth or Southampton and the deepwater quaysides. So that's one of those things that could have happened there.
- [31:55]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
I was thinking about, you know, having archers and pikemen on board and, you know, there are a lot of soldiers as well as mariners, aren't there?
- [32:03]
Dr. Dominic Fontana
There were a lot of soldiers and pikemen and archers on board the. The English ships. But to be honest, the range that they could attack the enemy at would need to be when they were pretty much grappled alongside rather than at any great distance. And the way that the battle played out in the Solent meant that the French galleys were coming in the Mediterranean galleys were coming into the attack on the bows of the English ships and therefore they could come into within probably 3 or 400 meters of the front of the English ships, loose off their guns and then turn around and go away again. So they'd never get into range where even an archer could actually touch them. And the problem that the English large ships, such as the Great Harry or the Mary Rose had was that the. They couldn't fire directly forwards. So in the tidal regime of the Solent, for at least part of the day, probably nearly half the day really, the English ships would have to be facing into the current with their bows directly pointing towards the French. It's an open target as far as the French might be concerned, and not much that the English troops on board the Mary Rose or the Great Harry could do about it.
- [33:35]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And one more question about the English fleet. Did it matter that the Vice admiral, Sir George Carew, had been appointed just the day before and wasn't a mariner? Or is that something that's sort of overstated because we talk about the sinking of the Mary Rose, on which he was when she went down.
- [33:55]
Dr. Dominic Fontana
No, I think the point about Sir George Carew is absolutely spot on. He had been appointed by Henry the day before the battle to be in command of the Mary Rose, to be vice admiral of the fleet. He wasn't a sailor as far as we know. His previous jobs had included things such as captain of Ruysbank Castle just outside the entrance to Calais. So a stone castle with some guns. It's very different from a ship at sea. There's much more technicality to operating a ship at sea because you've got the dynamic of the water and the tide and the wind, the enemy can move around and so on. So you have to know about how all those Things fit together. It's not just a case of being brave and facing the enemy. Gunfire. You've got to know what you're doing at the same time as all this. You've got to remember that there were forces on land in Portsmouth. There were about 5 to 6,000 militiamen on the Isle of Wight under the command of Sir Edward Bellingham. They were all making life very difficult for the French by shooting at the French fleet from the Isle of Wight and opposing some impromptu landings that some of the French commanders had made around the eastern coast of the Isle of Wight. So there were a number of skirmishes and some really quite big fights going on land as well as out in the Solent. This was a dynamic battlefield.
- [35:37]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
One of the reasons, I suppose it must have been so dynamic is that the wind and the tide can change so quickly. And there seems to be the sort of practical problems around how do you prevent warships colliding? I mean, what do we know about the conditions that day?
- [35:52]
Dr. Dominic Fontana
Well, the French provided us with a very good weather report saying that the day was calm without wind. We know that it was in the summer and that's pretty typical for the Solent. It can be a high pressure system sitting over southern England. There's no wind at all through the morning and through much of the day. What we do know is that there's always a sea breeze that blows up in the afternoon at about 3 o'. Clock. Now, if you haven't got any wind for most of the day, the big English ships really can't move. If they up anchor and try to drift around, they'd end up heading straight towards the French fleet, where they would be surrounded and pulverized rather quickly, I suspect. So from their point of view, it's much better to sit tight and wait on their anchors in order to work the ships at the point where they will work effectively. So in other words, they're going to sit there all day until the wind blows up, which it did at about 3 o', clock, 4 o' clock in the afternoon, and enabled the English ships to get going and they'd haul up the four course sail, that's the big one on the front mast. And that would give them some degree of steering as well as some degree of motive power to get the ships going. And it's at that point where the Mary Rose did do that at about, probably 4:00 in the afternoon, where she set sail from probably just off Cair Abbey on the north coast of the Isle of Wight to make a passage northwards, which would have allowed her to bring her full starboard side broadside to bear on the French galleys that were running in to the attack. We do know from the excavations of the Mary Rose that the starboard side guns had been fired. Indeed, one of them was in the process of being reloaded at the point where the Mary Rose capsized and sank. So there was a lot of action going on, both on board the ship and on shoreside. And with the French keeping track of all that must have been extremely difficult.
- [38:26]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So when we think about the Mary Rose sinking, there does seem to be a bit of a question about exactly why she was where she was, where was she going? I wonder if there's a certain amount of Sir George Carew knowing that Henry VIII is watching, trying to impress the King through the sort of performance that he's putting on. What do you think?
- [38:49]
Dr. Dominic Fontana
Well, absolutely. He was clearly trying to make an aggressive move, to be seen to shoot back at the French, to be able to loose off that broadside from the starboard side the Mary Rose, and then to recover the ship and be able to reload and carry on. The only thing is, and this is something that absolutely fascinates me, is why did she sink where she sank? It's a most peculiar location. In the Solent, she was 600 yards short of running aground. She carried on straight ahead in the direction that we excavated her from on the seabed, she would have run aground. Now, that might have taken about six minutes at three knots, so very little time. She was really close. And the problem is that at that time of day, if she turned and tried to go back to the English fleet, she'd have to make a turn to port to the left, and that would have cut her straight across the wind. And also the tidal current, which would have meant that in the middle of that manoeuvre, she would have lost all forward motion and ended up going sort of backwards and getting washed out towards the French fleet. And it would be a very difficult position to recover from.
- [40:23]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
But it does look as if she was trying to turn, doesn't it?
- [40:28]
Dr. Dominic Fontana
Not necessarily. Ah. I think she was trying to make a run directly forward, actually, to run herself aground. Because if she'd been taking incoming shot all day and had perhaps been hit somewhere, we have no archaeological evidence for that, but it's quite possible that she was hit somewhere in the bow. She could have shipped a lot of water which wouldn't have sunk her, but it would have made the Mary Rose sail very slowly and sluggishly. She wouldn't have been right the crew undoubtedly would have known that they knew their ship. They would have known what was right and what wasn't right. Sir George Carew, on the other hand, might not have been at all aware of that there was any real problem because his ship was sailing, it was floating, it was heading in a direction where he could fire the guns. So to him it might have been quite okay. But when they came towards the sand bank, for some reason she capsized over to her right hand side, in other words, to her starboard side. As soon as she tipped over, she will have let a lot of water directly into the gun ports, which would place water up high in the ship, pulling her over even further. Now, the thing is that there is work currently going on to try and understand these last few moments of the Mary Rose. There's a paper about to be published on that which I can't really give you details of, I'm afraid.
- [42:13]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Oh, Dominic. So tantalising.
- [42:16]
Dr. Dominic Fontana
There's a lot to be found out because the archaeological record from the Mary Rose is so comprehensive. It depends on how you look at the minutiae of the data, the things that were excavated from the ship and look at the relationships between them as to whether or not one can understand and reconstruct a really accurate sequence over the last few minutes of the Mary Roses military life before she sank.
- [42:48]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And we have to combine the archaeological evidence, of course, with the historic records we've got as well. I mean, we've got accounts by the Imperial Ambassador, Francois de van de Delph, who's watching, and he seems to have information from a Flemish sailor who was on board the Mary Rose and one of the few who survived. And the impression given there is that she has fired her guns on one side and perhaps is turning in order to fire guns from the other. Is that a reasonable thing to have been trying to do?
- [43:20]
Dr. Dominic Fontana
It's a possible thing. It would have been quite difficult to have turned within the distance that was available to the Mary Rose, because that really is a sharp turn. If she'd done it, turning to starboard to bring the port side guns directly to bear, she would have found herself being pushed out towards the French fleet and possibly out on her own. There's more to be discovered about all these things and that's what makes it so exciting. Personally, at this point, I think that she was heading to try and run herself aground such that the necessary repairs could be made to the hull so that the ship wouldn't sink, the guns wouldn't be lost, the crew wouldn't be lost.
- [44:06]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
I'm so tempted to just keep asking you questions about the sinking. But anyway, we talked about it before, you can talk about it again.
- [44:21]
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- [46:20]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
How quickly would she have sunk?
- [46:23]
Dr. Dominic Fontana
She actually sank very quickly indeed, a matter of a minute or two. She landed on the seabed quite hard and the seabed at that particular point is very soft gloopy mud. And because of that she embedded herself into the mud quite significantly and the mud really creates a massive suction underneath and it holds her there absolutely solidly, which is why the Tudor attempts at recovering the ship didn't work. They had a really good go after the battle of two major ships, emptying them of most of their contents so that they were very buoyant and then attempting to fix ropes underneath the Mary Rose. And with an empty hulk on either side running the Ropes tight at low tide and then allowing the tide with the buoyancy of the two ships either side, lifting her up off the seabed. They failed basically because of this incredible suction onto the hull from the gloopy mud at the bottom.
- [47:35]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Am I right in thinking that a French ship sank as well in this battle?
- [47:40]
Dr. Dominic Fontana
Yes, absolutely it did. The English seem to have claimed that they shot a French Mediterranean galley. There's certainly one shown in the Caudray picture that shows the battle scene at the Solent on that 19th of July. And you can see it sitting just behind another galley that's flying the cross Keys of St Peter as its flag, the Pope's galley. So somewhere out in the Solent, the chances are that there is one of the Mediterranean galleys, or at least some remains of it. I have had a few looks, but I haven't found it yet. You never know. It's one of those things that somebody may strike lucky with it one day.
- [48:25]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
The story of the Battle of the Solent so often ends with the Mary Rose sinking. And as Charles, our listener, points out, we want to know what happened next. I mean, the French have still got this invasion fleet moored off the Isle of Wight, with the army twice the size of Henry VIII's militia threatening England. What happened next?
- [48:45]
Dr. Dominic Fontana
Yeah, this is a really interesting story as well. The French account by Martin du Bellay suggests that Claude d' Annabeau held a meeting on the flagship with all of his military commanders to discuss what they might do. Whether they should attack the Isle of Wight, fortify it and hold it as a French possession, a thorn in the side of Henry, whether they should try and engage the English fleet out in the English Channel in open water, where they could circulate around one another and grapple up against each other and fight what was then a traditional naval battle, one ship alongside another. And they decided that they couldn't invade the Isle of Wight, basically because it would require too many troops to hold the island and they'd need to be able to supply them with food and wine throughout the winter. And there is no port on the south side of the island, so it would have made winter supply runs across the Channel very difficult. And with a normal population on the island at that time of about 6,000 people, there simply wouldn't have been the food reserves on the Isle of Wight to be able to support another 12,000 people that they thought would be required to hold the island. So that was a non starter, a logistical problem. So essentially they then decided that they would up anchor and sail up the English Channel towards Boulogne and lay siege to Boulogne. Certain poetry in that. After all, it was Boulogne that started it all off. The English didn't know where the French had gone when they dubbed anchor and left. Henry, in fact, sent via his admiral, Lord Lyell, had sent about five ships, three from Rye over to the north coast of France, around Normandy and up towards the River Seine, in order to discover what the French fleet were up to and to report back quickly. So they were actually a bit panicked at this point, the English, because they didn't know what had happened. And some messages had gone out around the country, including one that had gone up to Worcestershire, where a gentleman in Worcestershire had gathered together a whole militia army and was in the process of speed marching down to Portsmouth in order to bolster Henry's forces. They got as far as Newbury when they received an order to go back home again because the English had discovered where the French fleet was and the emergency was at least reduced somewhat. The French managed to make some landings on the Sussex coast somewhere near the River Ada, and had been chased off by the Sussex militia with the loss, I understand, of about 100 men on the French side. So they'd had a bit of a bloody nose there. And then they then headed on towards Boulogne and laid siege to the town. I think to demonstrate as much as anything that they could, that they could be a nuisance to Henry's forces defending Boulogne. It certainly in the peace treaty that happened the year after in 1546, was an important part of the peace treaty, which is in itself quite interesting.
- [52:40]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So to conclude then, Dominic, we've got contradictory evidence. We've got this very carefully put together fleet which is huge, which has taken much effort, and then we've got a plan that depends on them being able to enter through this narrow waterway which is really well defended. That feels like it hasn't been thought through. How much do you think this was a real invasion attempt by the French?
- [53:07]
Dr. Dominic Fontana
I think it was a very serious invasion attempt. Francois spent a lot of money. He wouldn't have done that if he was just bluffing. I think that the French would have been quite taken aback had they actually managed to get the troops ashore. I think the resistance to them would have been quite significant. And although Henry was very disadvantaged in the number of troops, I don't think the French would have had an easy time. Also, I think it's worth remembering that Claude d', Annebeau, the French admiral who was in charge, knew that both Henry and Francois were not in good health and that the chances of them lasting any great amount of time was not great. And he was quite right in that prediction. And he certainly is recorded as suggesting that it wasn't worth the expenditure of so much Christian blood because the two rulers were infirm. So a wily politician, somebody who recognizes the reality of the situation, quite possibly. But these are all the things that are so exciting to explore and research and to find out from the history and from the documents and from the archeology. We can never give an absolute total answer to anything, but what we can do is find out. And that is huge fun.
- [54:43]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
It certainly is, and it's been huge fun talking to you about it. Thank you so very much, Dominic Fontana, for coming back onto the podcast. Thank you and for this fascinating analysis of the Battle of the Solent.
- [54:54]
Dr. Dominic Fontana
Thank you very much, Susanna thank you.
- [54:58]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
For listening to this episode of Not Just the Tudors from History Hit. And to my producer Rob Weinberg, we are always eager to hear from you, including receiving your brilliant ideas for subjects we can cover. So do drop us a line@notjusthetorshistoryhit.com and I look forward to joining you again for another episode Episode Next time on Not Just the Tutors From History Hit.
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