Oral History Gallery

Extract Text (Duration01.52)

Jenny: The early days of the discovery of the Mary Rose, the Oceanography Department was involved with Alexandra McKee when he first found the echo sounding traces. The Royal Engineers were involved with the diving in the early days and some of the Oceanography Department divers were diving with them, but personally when Margaret Rule gave a talk at a under water science diving conference, saying that she needed biologists as well as archaeologists, that was the opportunity for me to join in. Up until then if you wanted to work on the archaeology you had to commit at least three months to be worth being trained and to become useful, and with a full time job I couldn't do that but to do biology on an intermittent basis was just right.

Q: And is that the same for�

Ken: No with me, in fact I was able; I did do my stint three months as a volunteer diver excavator and that was memorable time, because certainly the area I was working was fairly still in, in pioneering trenches so we were not very deep down in [the] wreck, so I never really discovered anything hugely amazing. I mean I was hugely excited one day to find a silver button about the size of a pea and, you know, I was ever so excited that I finally after about two months excavation, I'd found something that was memorable and my bubble was soon deflated when they said, "Oh no that's Victorian rubbish."