Skeletons Of The Mary Rose: The New Evidence (More4 Monday 3 April 2023)

Skeletons Of The Mary Rose: The New Evidence airs a new episode tonight Monday 3 April 2023 on More4.

An important piece of English history, the Mary Rose is now a museum. The wreck of Henry VIII’s favoured warship, which went down in 1545 off the coast of Portsmouth, is often used to symbolise everything that was great about Tudor culture. Is that so? This Secret History documentary spends a year trying to determine who exactly manned this quintessentially English battleship.

The show employs isotope and DNA analysis to show the origins of the cast and crew, casting doubt on the notion that Tudor Britain was a monocultural White utopia. Historian of Black Britain Onyeka Nubia finds the possibility that one of the crew members was African to be a surprise.

The programme follows Onyeka as he examines the remarkable 16th-century Guinean free-diver Jacques Francis, who with the aid of the curator of the Mary Rose Trust, recovered several treasures from the wreck of the Mary Rose, including a cannon. Megan Owens, a professional genealogist, is followed throughout the show as she searches for relatives of the two crew members for whom we have identities.

Megan finds what may be the first living connection to the Mary Rose through a paper trail that stretches back 500 years. The findings of this one-of-a-kind study far outstrip any and all predictions.

When new information about the ship’s company and the time period of Tudor England becomes available, Alex and the Mary Rose Trust are forced to revise their original accounts.

Airdate: Monday 3 April 2023 at 10.00pm on More4.

Featured Image Credit: More4