Raised from the depths, the face of the Mary Rose

(Image: Hufton + Crow)

This sailor is having an out-of-body experience: his skeleton has been used to reconstruct his appearance when he was a sailor aboard Henry VIII's flagship, the Mary Rose.

The Mary Rose was the battle-hardened pride of the royal fleet when it sank in its home waters off Portsmouth Harbour in 1545. Five hundred sailors perished, and the shock of the event ? watched by a horrified King Henry from the shore ? left a deep wound in the English psyche, leading some to call it "the first Titanic".

Forensic scientists more accustomed to working with murder victims have recreated the faces of seven crew members for the Mary Rose museum, which opened today.

Of the 179 skeletons recovered since the ship was raised in 1982, 92 were fairly complete, like this one. All were male and the youngest were only 13 years old.

The bones also reveal the healed fractures, broken noses and arrow wounds that would have been part of life on a warship at that turbulent time. This man's skeleton shows that he was an archer ? he had os acromiale, a condition caused by stress on the arm and shoulder muscles from repeatedly shooting arrows.

Read more: "There's something about Mary"

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