CASE STUDY MARY ROSE MUSEUM


being entirely reconfi gured in 2016, when the building will be converted into a more conventional visitor centre.


Up she rises To appreciate the challenges that had to be tackled in developing the engineering design for this unique museum, it helps to understand how the hull was salvaged. Having been embalmed in her watery Solent grave for centuries, the Mary Rose’s 1982 recovery operation was, and still is, the largest underwater maritime archaeological excavation ever attempted.


In addition to the 280-tonne section of hull, the excavation also produced an astonishing collection of 19,000 16th- century treasures. After it was retrieved from the seabed,


the wooden carcass was placed in No 3 dock at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, where the painstaking task of conserving its ancient timbers commenced. A tensile fabric enclosure, known as the Wemyss building, was erected over the dock. Suspended inside this was an insulated enclosure of foil-faced insulation – termed the ‘hot box’ by the


engineers, which was designed to keep the environment around the hull at a constant 25-27°C. Heating was provided by radiant panels placed beneath the steel cage that supported the hull and hot box, while cool air was drawn from within the confi nes of the dry dock. Inside the insulated box, the timbers were initially sprayed with a fi ne mist of chilled water to stabilise them, and later with an aqueous solution of polyethylene glycol (PEG) wood preservative solution. The new museum was built around the tented building to enable the PEG


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September 2013 CIBSE Journal 37


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