world of warships henri iv historical design

Many French officers were celebrating the saint’s day on land, while local dignitaries and their families were feasting aboard the fleet. The French did not expect the English to arrive for several more days and were celebrating the Feast of St Lawrence when the English fleet arrived. On the 6th August, Howard received word that the French navy had mobilized and he left Portsmouth to return to Brittany. He returned to Portsmouth in late July in order to resupply where he was visited by the king. In the weeks leading up to the battle, Howard led successful raids along the coast of Brittany, capturing 40 French ships and sacking French towns. This was to be a matter of significance in the Battle of St Mathieu on the 10th August 1512. While the Mary Rose was not the largest of Henry’s ships – the 1000 ton Regent held that position – it was the Mary Rose that the Admiral of the Fleet, Edward Howard, picked as his flagship. It has been suggested that Henry himself insisted on the design, which would add to the reasons why he was so proud of the Mary Rose. The Mary Rose was therefore of a state-of-the-art design. This required a new design feature: gun ports. The Mary Rose, on the other hand, carried six or eight large guns from the beginning of her career. While both were carracks designed for war, the Peter Pomegranate was not built to carry heavy guns. The Mary Rose was larger than her sister ship - 600 tons to the Peter Pomegranate’s 450 - but this was not the only difference between the ships. Neatly, the Virgin Mary was known at the time as the ‘Mystic Rose’ the name of the Mary Rose therefore signifies not only the power of the Tudor dynasty, but also that of the Virgin Mary. The badges of the ships – the Rose and the Pomegranate – celebrate the royal couple the rose being the symbol of the king, and the pomegranate being that of his first wife, Katherine of Aragon. Instead, it was the fashion to name ships for saints and the pairing of the Mary with the Peter supports this. It is often claimed that the ship was named after Henry’s sister, Mary Tudor but no evidence supports this. The first account that names the Mary Rose is a letter from June 1511.

The ships were built in Portsmouth, making the sinking of the Mary Rose in the Solent and her eventual resting place in Portsmouth’s Mary Rose Museum all the more poignant.

These ships were to be the Mary Rose and her 'sister' ship, the Peter Pomegranate. The earliest reference to the Mary Rose is 29th January 1510, in a letter ordering the construction of “two new ships”.

World of warships henri iv historical design