Bones from the wreck of the Mary Rose reveal what life was like aboard a Tudor warship

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Well-preserved bones recovered from an English shipwreck shed light on what life was like for the crew of the ill-fated Mary Rose – and offer surprising insights into changes in bone chemistry that could benefit modern medical research.

The Mary Rose was one of the largest warships in the Tudor Navy during the reign of King Henry VIII until she sank on 19 July 1545 during a battle against the French. Hundreds of people were trapped on board when the ship sank in the Solent, a strait between the Isle of Wight and mainland Britain.

In 1982, the ship’s hull, its artefacts and the bones of 179 crew members were excavated from the Solent and brought to the surface. Coca and his collection of 19,000 items are on display at Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth, England, and research is ongoing on the remains to uncover aspects of the crew’s identity and lifestyle.

The researchers analyzed the collarbones of 12 men between the ages of 13 and 40 who died on the Mary Rose to see how their burdens on the ship might have shaped their bone chemistry. The team also looked for telltale signs of aging and evidence of handedness, or which hand the crew members naturally preferred.

The results of the study were published Wednesday in the journal PLOS Oneand the findings could contribute to a better understanding of age-related changes in our bones.

“Advancing our knowledge of bone chemistry is critical to understanding how our skeletons age and how medical conditions affect bones,” said lead study author Dr Sheona Shankland, research associate at Lancaster Medical School at the University Lancaster from Great Britain.

“Understanding these changes could allow us to be more informed about fracture risk and the causes of conditions such as osteoporosis and osteoarthritis, which are common with aging.”

The enduring mystique of the Mary Rose

In 1510, a year after ascending to the throne, Henry VIII signed a request to add two new ships to the royal fleet. The Mary Rose was one of them, and the flagship became the king’s favourite.

The ship saw action against the French in Brest, France, in 1512, and succumbed in its final battle during a major invasion by the French fleet in 1545. Despite an abundance of research since the ship’s recovery, questions remain as to the cause of the ship’s demise . to sink

“Regardless of the cause, she rolled onto her starboard side and water came in through the open gun ports,” said study co-author Dr. Alex Hildred, chief of research and curator of munitions at the Mary Rose Museum.

“With few access points between decks and heavy netting spread across the open upper deck, the 500 men were trapped aboard,” Hildred said. “Those stationed on the upper decks in the fore and aft castles, or in the rigging, were the only survivors.”

Hildred helped oversee the underwater excavation, including the recovery of the largest concentration of human remains from the wreck, and has since facilitated research on the bones.

Despite being underwater for hundreds of years, the remains were remarkably well preserved because a layer of sediment that settled on top of the ship created an oxygen-free environment, said Shankland, who will start as a lecturer at the University of Glasgow in Scotland in November. .

“The nature of this environment means that the remains of the sailors have not degraded in the same way that would be expected of most archaeological finds, allowing us to reliably investigate the bone chemistry,” she said.

Favoring the right hand

Shankland was interested in the idea of ​​studying the clavicles, or clavicles, from the wreck because the bones show unique characteristics related to age, development and growth.

S-shaped bones are some of the first to form in the human body, but the last to fuse completely—usually between 22 and 25 years of age in humans. They play a critical role in attaching the upper limbs to the body, and collarbones are some of the most commonly fractured bones, said study co-author Dr. Adam Taylor, director of the Clinical Anatomy Learning Center and professor of anatomy at Lancaster University.

The research team used Raman spectroscopy, a nondestructive method that preserves valuable samples, to study the bones, Shankland said.

The method involves using light to discover the chemistry of a sample. The team analyzed how the light reacted with the molecules in the bones, and changes in the color of the light allowed the researchers to identify certain substances.

Bones are composed of a balance of minerals and proteins. Minerals give bones strength, resistance and stiffness, while proteins give them flexibility and resistance to fracture, Shankland said.

The analysis showed that the balance of proteins and minerals changes with aging. Bone mineral content increases with age and protein content decreases. The changes were most noticeable in the right collarbones, indicating that the crew members preferred their right hands – but they may not have had a choice.

“Since people at this time would have been forced to be right-handed, as left-handedness had negative associations in medieval England, we could hypothesize that this right-sided difference is due to handedness,” Shankland said via email.

At the time, left-handedness was associated with witchcraft, so crew members would have relied on their right hands and put more stress on the right side during repetitive tasks on the ship, Shankland said.

Understanding the relationship between the hand and the impact on the clavicle is crucial. When people fall, they usually reach out with their dominant hand to break the fall — which is one of the most common ways to fracture the collarbone, Shankland said.

“This suggests that handedness influences the chemistry of the clavicle bone, providing an important modern consideration for fracture risk,” Shankland said. “These results improve our understanding of the lives of Tudor sailors, but also contribute to modern scientific investigations to better understand changes in bone chemistry and potential links to age-related bone diseases such as osteoarthritis.”

The study provides a new facet of information about the crew members of the Mary Rose and how their occupations in Tudor England shaped their bodies and bones, said Richard Madgwick, professor at Cardiff University’s School of History, Archeology and Religion. Great Britain. Madgwick was not involved in the current study, but has previously researched other aspects of the remains.

“The biomechanical aspects of these heavy, repetitive tasks have long been understood, but the chemical variation and contrasting changes in the mineral and protein components are much less understood,” Madgwick said via email. “The study has ramifications beyond the Mary Rose – its new, high-resolution method offers a new approach to gaining information about human lifestyles, occupations and stress endured in the past, crucially, without any destruction of priceless archaeological remains. “

New revelations

Each time researchers study the remains of the crew, they glean new insights, such as diverse environments of some of the crew members.

“That this research has tangible benefits today, nearly 500 years after the ship sank, is both remarkable and humbling,” Hildred said.

Next, Shankland wants to study the remains of the archers aboard the ship to see if their spines bear any of the marks of the unique moves they performed. Archers used longbows, which required a large amount of spinal rotation when drawing back the bowstring.

“This means that one part of the spine is subjected to more repetitive stress in a predictable movement, so the changes along the spine would not be symmetrical,” Shankland said. “Investigating the impact on the spine would help us understand changes in bone chemistry with age, but also with activity stress.”

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