Forensic Historical Findings

 

This post is, in particular, for my criminal justice students.

 

Forensic science is now being used to interpret the past. The BBC has several programs devoted to the subject, but here is a documentary about a single subject, the Mary Rose.

 

This ship was the largest ship in King Henry the VIII’s fleet. It capsized while he watched from shore.

 

In the program, they study the crew’s remains to gain insight into the causes of the sinking.

 

James Pilant

 

Ghosts of the Mary Rose : Documentary³ – YouTube

 

 

From around the web.

 

From the web site, Peace and Freedom.

 

http://johnib.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/the-mary-rose-flagship-for-henry-viii-sails-back-to-life/

 

This is how it is done. The half of the ship that survives sits on a

frame in a dry dock. Around this, a modern museum has been built.

Inside, the visitor stands on a central suspended walkway. To the right,

behind windows, is the wreck, as if cut down the middle. To the left,

architects have constructed a mirror image, on the decks of which

objects can be examined in situ. There are central walkways at three

levels.

 

I did not expect to like the new building, but the oval structure

embracing the fish-shaped ship looks good from outside, a sort of great

black stealth flying-saucer. From near to, it’s like Peggotty’s house,

the upturned boat on Yarmouth beach in David Copperfield.

 

I have not been so elated by a museum since I first looked into the

Pitt-Rivers collection’s wild eccentricities in Oxford. Here at

Portsmouth, the beauty of ordinary items impresses: the whole wooden

world of a Tudor warship. Here, three feet away, is the 90-gallon

cauldron for boiling 500 men’s beef, and the brick casing that held it

over the fire, and the very half-burnt logs, caught just as they were

extinguished by that inrush of water 468 years ago.