Of Interest

Dave,

I think there are two suttle differences between the treatment of modern (ww2) aviation wrecks and the Mary Rose in terms of war graves, firstly the Mary Rose is over 400 years old, so family links are distant, but it also comes from a period where crew records, or even family/society records makes it difficult to confirm any such links,

Secondly the Mary Rose is being conserved and preserved in its entirety inclusive of the crew remains in an archealogical approach, where as the current approach to war grave wrecks is often to liberate the parts for restoration and use in rebuilds where the orginal identity of the parts may become lost and the links to the crew who were lost in the fatality are lost totally, or to rebuild the aircraft the aircraft to fly with significant new metal etc simply to transfer providence, rather than preserve its true history intact.

I think in time aviation wrecks will be subject to similar approaches when most of the war related generations (peer, and direct decendants) have past, but then the wrecks will be of more interest as time capsules rather than just spare parts and in any case of little use for that purpose as unfortunately by that time much of their structures will be rotted away, as has half of the Mary Rose?

Again there is a need for the NHAC to revise its own policy on recovery and display of viable objects before they become cost prohibitative.

regards

Mark P

I think there is a definate link to historic aviation, as the Mary Rose was technically a War Grave and yet, unlike aircraft that could be, it was raised and has been preserved in a museum. there are all sorts of ethical issues about that, and perhaps about the comparison as it is a unique example and was only raised as it was in danger of being dredged from memory, but I think the project has shown that perhaps more could be done to raise aircraft below the deep and preserve them.

There’s an absolutely fascinating radio documentary in The Reunion series on the raising of the Mary Rose, where they got all the team together again, here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/the_reunion_2004.shtml

Another episode on this page has a documentary getting the Concorde team back together too
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/reunion/index.shtml

The lift time has been changed now due 10:30 when I’m out DOH!

“stem to stern”

Thanks Old Fart, I’m not the nautical type, could you tell me what the ‘stem timber’ means, is that the timber from the bottom of the hull?

Thanks