Mary Rose Trust
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. History 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