The mysteries behind Henry VIII’s warship the Mary Rose could lead to a better understanding of how British people lived over 500 years ago, researchers hope.
For the past 18 months the Mary Rose Trust has been working with sports scientists from the College of Engineering at Swansea University to discover more about the lives of medieval archers on board.
When the ship, which sank in 1545, was raised from the Solent in 1982 many thousands of medieval artefacts along with 92 fairly complete skeletons and 100 or so other human remains were recovered.
Nick Owen, a sport and exercise biomechanist at Swansea now hopes scientists across the world can help draw a “fuller picture” of those on board.
He said: “The pipe dream, albeit a very achievable pipe dream, is to create a database of laser scans, of micro-CT scans and a bio-bank of DNA that would become a resource which could be accessed anywhere in the world for further scientific research in all manner of fields.
“It would allow scientists anywhere access to all the information they could want without the need to move human remains across the world at great expense and at risk of damage.
“That would be unique in the world but it is what we are working towards achieving.”
He added: “That achievement however would rely solely on a large amount of funding and we are currently in preliminary discussions with a number of institutions on the possibility of securing that funding.”
There was a company of archers aboard the Mary Rose when it sank, at a time when many archers came from Wales and the southwest of England.
They were considered elite athletes of the Tudor age, requiring great skill and strength to fire up to 12 arrows a minute, holding a heavy bow in one arm.
The team from Swansea are researching the skeletons of the archers to examine the effects of a life of using very powerful longbows on the musculoskeletal system.
Alexzandra Hildred, curator of ordnance at the Mary Rose Trust, said: “Many of the skeletons recovered show evidence of repetitive stress injuries of the shoulder and lower spine.
“This could be as a result of the shooting heavy longbows regularly.
“Being able to quantify the stresses and their effect on the skeleton may enable us at last to isolate an elite group of professional archers from the ship.”
Mr Owen now hopes that many other facets of Tudor life can also be explored.
He said: “The Mary Rose Trust has in its possession a time capsule dating back 500 years.
“It has the skeletons of 100 people and the human remains of another 100 people who died on that ship on July 19, 1545.
“That is a hugely unique archive, it is a rare resource in archaeology.
“We essentially have the ability to learn about 200 people who died on the same day 500 years ago.
“We know exactly how they died but there are so many facets of their lives that we have not learnt, and such a database could help us draw a fuller picture of those lives, of who these people were.”
As part of Swansea University’s Festival of Research – he and his colleagues this week showcased the results of their research so far during a public lecture in the city.
And he said further information about the archers on board the Mary Rose should be revealed later this year.
He added: “In terms of our own research, we are expecting more DNA results this summer.
“Extracting DNA is one thing and that is what we have done so far.
“But learning the traits of that DNA is another thing, and our research there continues.”