Mary Rose Trust
Organization logo
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| Formation | 1979 |
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| Type | Limited charitable trust |
| Legal status | Active |
| Purpose | Preserve, display and spread knowledge about the Mary Rose |
| Location | |
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Official language
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English |
| Website | www |
The Mary Rose Trust is a limited charitable trust based in Portsmouth in the United Kingdom. Its primary aims are to preserve, display and spread knowledge about the 16th century warship Mary Rose which sank in the Solent on 19 July 1545 and was salvaged by the Trust in October 1982.
The Mary Rose Trust runs the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
The Mary Rose Trust traces its origins back to the Mary Rose Committee, founded in 1968 with the intent "to find, excavate, raise and preserve for all time such remains of the ship Mary Rose as may be of historical or archaeological interest". The wrecksite was scouted and surveyed with side scan sonar in 1967-68, revealing a hidden feature, the first loose timber was located in 1970 and the buried wreck of the Mary Rose finally located on 5 May 1971. Throughout the 1970s volunteer divers and archaeologists surveyed the ship and conducted some limited excavations.
In the 1960s and 70s the Mary Rose Committee collaborated with museum representatives, diving clubs and archaeologists to campaign for legal protection of shipwrecks as vital to the national historical heritage. The Merchant Shipping Act of 1894 stipulated that any wreck that was unclaimed and was salvaged had to be sold to pay for the expenses of the salvers. This meant that any shipwreck old enough to fall under the sway of the Act was threatened by commercial exploitation. Instead of being carefully excavated and recorded by maritime archaeologists, historically invaluable wrecks risked being destroyed by unscrupulous salvers and treasure hunters. The joint organisation Committee for Nautical Archaeology, of which the Mary Rose Committee was a member, successfully lobbied to grant the wreck legal protection under the Protection of Wrecks Act of 1973, with the Mary Rose being among the first to receive legal protection. However, the risk of having salvaged artefacts confiscated was still a very real risk under UK salvage law, and a confrontation had to be averted by continuous negotiations with the Receiver of Wreck, a division of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. The Mary Rose, along with a few other historic wrecks, was a vital example during the lobbying for the new shipping act as well as the gradual change in implementation of UK salvage law.
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