The science of preserving Henry VIII's 1200+ cannonballs
March 9, 2018, Diamond Light Source
In a ground-breaking partnership between The Mary Rose, UCL and Diamond Light Source, the Mary Rose's Head of Conservation, Dr. Eleanor Schofield and her colleagues are working at the cutting edge of conservation science to protect and preserve the huge haul of cannonballs found on Henry VIII's flagship. But in a contradictory twist, the only way to uncover how to preserve them is to sacrifice some of them.
Dr. Schofield explains: "This is conservation science at its most cutting edge. We have taken just 12 of the cannonballs—less than 1 percent of the Mary Rose's stock but enough to provide statistical validity of our findings—to investigate different methods of conservation through synchrotron science. Our cannonball sample is unique in that they were all raised from the sea at the same time, made at the same time, and are of very similar construction as only one iron blast furnace existed in Britain at the time of the Mary Rose's construction. This means that once we've found the solution, then the cannonballs can be preserved for generations to come and the science made available globally to all those whose conservation work involves maritime or iron-rich artefacts."
Read more at:
https://phys.org/news/2018-03-science-henry-viii-cannonballs.html#jCp
