Margaret Rule 1 - Baby-sitting the Mary Rose
In 1965 Margaret joined the early stages of the search for the Mary Rose. The team worked at weekends and in their spare time. Although, at first, Margaret did not dive, she was an experienced archaeologist and her role was to help the divers record what they saw.
As more of the ship became uncovered, the project turned into a full-time operation. Margaret became Archaeological Director in charge of the excavation, and she continued working for the Mary Rose Trust until 1994.
In the clips below Margaret explains how she became involved with the Mary Rose search, and recalls some of the key moments during the search and recovery of the ship.
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Extract Text (Duration0.39)
I'm Margaret Rule, in 1965 I was working as a land archaeologist. I was a curator at the Roman Palace at Fishbourne and giving evening classes to the general public and in my class was Alexander McKee, and he told me that he wanted to search for and find the Mary Rose. So I joined his team hunting for the Mary Rose in 1965, and I carried on for... how many years?, until 1994. That's a large chunk of ones life to be searching for, finding, recovering and then baby-sitting the Mary Rose.
Baby-sitting the Mary Rose.
0.39 mins - mp3 File
Eyeball observations, looking for changes in the seabed.
01.06 mins - mp3 File
A whole museum worth of object there in that mud.
01.19 mins - mp3 File
Where the Mary Rose lay we had a big butterfly or W shaped blot.
01.31 mins - mp3 File
Sticking out of the seabed about eight timbers, sticking up like rotten tooth stumps.
01.29 mins - mp3 File
Working around the tidal pattern.
0.49 mins - mp3 File
We divided the ship into eleven trenches.
01.17 mins - mp3 File
Literally thousand of objects were going ashore.
0.41 mins - mp3 File
