Mary Rose Museum's Queer Lense

That ^ was the Battle of Saint Mathieu, off Brest. The Breton/French ship which exploded was the Marie-la-Cordelière or just Cordelière and the English ship was the Regent.

The crew of the Cordelière had thrown grappling hooks to pull the ships together and board the Regent, a common tactic at the time

The Mary Rose was involved in the engagement, attacking the Petite Louise, the other ship covering the retreat of the French/Breton fleet into Brest.

https://www.vam.ac.uk/dundee/articles/queering-the-museum am planning to visit here and I noticed that they also have a definite plan to "queer" the Museum.

Another one who would recommend going to visit the Vasa. It is incredible to see, and quite fascinating in terms of the different approaches to how you raise a shipwreck and the extent to which you restore the ship. (And their displays have now sorted out which skeletons are female).

Not a shipwreck for which there has been archaeology but, in 1512, there was a battle between the English and French fleets (off the French coast). One of the English ships became entangled with I think the French flagships, both caught fire and sank with huge loss of life. However, because the French had been caught somewhat unawares, there were multiple women on board who had been dining on the ship and there was no time to get them off before the battle.

Another article I saw more or less said that. There may well have been women on board anyway.

Slightly awkward for them because that skeleton was one they chose to make a facial reconstruction from, calling it 'Gustav' when they thought it was a male (those facial reconstructions were eerily lifelike, I remember being astounded by them when I saw them). But the artist went back and redid it when the remains were reclassified. It’s an interesting read.

One report I read did speculate that maybe the woman smuggled herself on board by dressing as a man

Women were allowed on board British navy ships when they were in port, so perhaps the Vasa sailed and she was still on board for some reason.

The 17thc ship Vasa, in Sweden, similarly sank and was raised in the 1960s - if anyone gets the chance on a visit to Stockholm, it’s a fantastic museum and the vessel is just staggering in every way - but I wonder if this sort of queering is happening there now too. It wasn’t when I was last there but that was almost 10 years ago.

Very recently they did discover that a crew-member’s skeleton they’d always classified as male was actually female - they used a new and more precise DNA technique. One report I read did speculate that maybe the woman smuggled herself on board by dressing as a man. But here I expect they’d be insisting she was AFAB but enby. And used their nit comb to style their gender-defying short hair while scrutinising theirself critically yet defiantly in their hand-mirror.

The author places the blog in an international context by saying that other museums are “queering their collections”, including Tate Britain and the Wellcome Collection in London, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
The Mary Rose Trust defended the blog, stating: “Queering the collection is an approach used by museums around the world

Yes, and that's the problem, isn't it? 'Imaginatively reinterpeting' (to put it kindly) the past to support your own personal prejudices despite the fact there's nothing to support it and it bears no relevance to what you're talking about.

The most notable among hundreds of complaints came from Professor Philip Hensher, the novelist and academic, who is gay. He said: “I am as keen as anyone on gay sex but I have to say to these curators — you’re f*ing mental.”

Say it like it is, Prof Hensher.

Wasn't the Mary Rose also top heavy with too many guns (trying to impress the French) so that when she heeled over with the wind the weight pulled her over and she took on water? Carew's also reported to have said something about 'Knaves I cannot rule,' the theory being they didn't understand the order to close the gunports.

That is very funny. Philip Hensher is very much on the Wrong Side of History as well, which makes it even better.

The Times has picked this up: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/97de48ce-3629-11ee-8810-d3022cd752ba?shareToken=483157041049642cfe531320aca70a77

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the LGBTQIA+ word salad is the work of an intern...

Also not helped by Sir George Carew only having been appointed Vice Admiral the day before, and therefore not having had time to work with the ship’s master and crew before attempting a tricky manoeuvre in a very short time frame and in front of Henry.

You’re right - it’s thought to be Catherine Parr in the engraving, meeting Sir William Paulet. I knew it was one of the Catherines. I wonder if I’ve also got mixed up with Charles Brandon’s wife, as Brandon is also shown in the engraving and he died not long after the Mary Rose sank. I know there’s a story somewhere there just can’t quite remember.

If anyone from the museum is reading this thread, could you get the intern to write something about the crew's starsigns?

Tia.

It's thought that one of the reasons the ship sank was that the crew didn't necessarily have a common language as the Spanish sailors didn't speak Engish - not sure I buy that but its always interesting to see evidence of migration - although the best one was the skeleton in a Roman cemetry near York that scientific testing suggested was born in China so had presumably travelled the entire SIlk Road and then moved on to Britain.

Nit combs through history

I had to be sneaky with this one as it got all uppity and said nit combs were not involved in the history of Stonewall.

In the heart of the night, a fire ignited,
A battle for justice, courage uninvited.
A nit comb emerged, their spirit so bold,
With a brick in their teeth, a story to be told.

Amidst shadows and secrets, they took their stand,
A catalyst for less nits, in a world unplanned.
With a resolute heart and a purpose so clear,
They de-nitted the first brick, shattering fear.

Stonewall's dim alleyways echoed the cry,
Of those who had scratched, who wouldn't comply.
The comb soared through nits, a symbol anew,
Of the fight for equality, for a love that's true.

With strength from within, they broke down the wall
Defying oppression, answering the call
A nit was extinguished, a movement took flight,
As that first nit free brick soared through the stillness of night.

From that single act, a revolution was born,
A legacy of less scratching, in the face of scorn.
The first brick they de-nitted, a beacon of light,
Guiding us forward, through the darkest of night.

I missed that documentary - I think the stuff I read must have come from that research but I hadn't seen anything about the shipwrecked Spanish sailors. It is fascinating to think how people ended up dispersed to other countries via shipwrecks. I remember hearing about an English man who turned up in Japan (I think) because he got shipwrecked and it was 20 years later before a European trading post was set up nearby and he could write home to say he was still alive!

Catherine of Aragon has a black slave if I recall correctly who was freed after she came to England and then ended up moving back to Spain and marrying, but I can't remember if the Becoming Elizabeth character was based on a real person?

Apparently he was interested in Katherine Willoughby (Charles Brandon's wife) but I suspect that given she'd already been married to one much older man (her guardian of all people) and was a close friend of Katherine Parr I can't imagine she was interested - she was one of a number of aristocratic women who married their groom second time round...

Thin links, no substance, trivial. How much did the museum pay for this 'work'?

Maybe she was back to haunt him!

It couldn't even be Katherine Parr as she was already married to Henry by 1545.

THere was a brilliant documentary a few years ago by a guy I knew from the days before the ship came up who went on to be a medic. He looked at some of the skeletons and the DNA evidence and discussed the evidence that a number of the crew (including the bosun) were shipwrecked Spanish sailors and the chances that some of them were from Africa were pretty high. I love that fact that one of the SPanish characters in Becoming ELizabeth on CHannel 4 is black as the chances are that a lot of the Spanish grandees at the time had African ancestry.

Unlikely as she'd been dead for 3 years at that point (She died in February 1543 and the Mary Rose sank in July 1545.

The University of Leicester and in particular Professor Richard Sandell are big cheerleaders of all this

And therein lies the problem as Leicester remains the pre eminent niversity for musem studies and since it dug up Ricky 3 its heading for a much higher slot in archaeology too

More seriously, it is a bit frustrating as the Mary Rose Museum has previously done hidden histories/unknown stories very well. Their video on early salvage attempts includes the 16th century African salvage diver who is the first known black man to appear in an English court case (as a witness for his employer iirc). And they have done DNA research to show that the drowned men included those with middle eastern and North African heritage, including one man who was born and grew up in the West country but appears to have had an English mother and a North African father.

All of which is interesting because it is archaeological and historical study directly related to the Mary Rose through finds and salvage attempts that has changed assumptions about the people involved with her. This is just an attempt to find an alternative perspective that is not supported by the finds that they have highlighted.

DS thinks Gay Nit Comb sounds like a band. And said the chatGPT LGBT banana thing misseda trick by not mentioning being bendy/ not straight.

These are brilliant, I literally have tears in my eyes. Thank you.