Posted on 08/28/2018 10:55:58 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Marine archaeology has advanced considerably over that last 50 years. My last visit to Mary Rose was early on in the restoration. Much has been done since those early days.
Kansas City has a 1850’s steamboat, the Arabia, that sank in the Missouri River and was left in a farm field when the course of the river changed. The preservation is remarkable, some of the foodstuffs were edible and the trade goods looked like they just came from the factory. The ship was well preserved, but only a portion of it was conserved. Well worth a visit and closer to Portsmouth for those on this side of the pond.
LOL! England was a magnet for people fleeing religious persecution throughout Europe, so a lot of Italians and other people from Italy, and French, and Germans, etc etc wound up there. By the late 16th c, Shakespeare was writing plays, and in a relatively short career (ending under James I/VI, who loved Shakespeare's work even before he was crowned, such that Shakespeare was one of the people appointed to hold up the royal canopy during the coronation. Oh, but don't forget, Shakespeare was illiterate and was barely able to stand up and hold the canopy at the same time) produced Othello (black protagonist), and collaborated on the unfinished "Sir Thomas More" which was about racial intolerance while superficially about something else (the manuscript is the longest sample of his handwriting in existence).
Also, Henry VIII can be credited as father of the British Navy -- he imported coal miners and metallurgists from some of the German states in order to replace naval and field guns with iron-based versions (the bronze cannon were expensive and unreliable, even dangerous to use), which tended to make vessel redesign a learn-by-doing affair until they were no longer topheavy.
Thanks!
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