Ray Mears discovers 400-Year-Old perfectly preserved Warbows Salvaged From a Sunken Tudor Warships

our knowledge of this formidable weapon comes largely from the Tudor warship the Mary Rose raised from the solent in the 1980s the Mary Rose has revealed a trove of artifacts including a number of perfectly preserved War bows these discoveries have given incredible insights into late medieval archery inspiring Todd and Joe's investigations here today so Joe there's a 70 76 pound bow but in medieval times we know from the Mary Rose that bows were much heavier well what what would this one be so it's bigger both this is sort of 130 540 pound draw weight which is what you need really to shift a heavy Arrow to do some damage so we're talking about a war but a war boat and we know from the Mary Rose the bows that were brought to happen for that the average draw weight I think was 140 pounds yeah 140 so that's perfect fits in with what my findings have been to shoot a heavy air a decent weight but there were bows on the mirrors that were much heavier 180 185 pounds draw away I mean monsters yeah as you say some real big ones which take a long time to learn how to shoot accurately um years in fact so this one's about 160 pounds ish so yeah you've got the real nice flexible sap wood and the nice hard compression resilient belly Heartwood which makes a perfect Valley as we had seen previously there's only one way to determine the true strength of a bow it's another tense moment for Joe as he tests the heavier warbow wow 154 pound draw weight it's a similar draw weight to those discovered aboard the Mary Rose I get big guys who go to the gym all the time who oh I pull that they literally pull it halfway they can't do it because their muscles haven't developed in the right way to pull that boat it's for these reasons why practice was so important for Archers and might be why Edward the first insisted that men forego all other sports but of course it wasn't just the science of attack that was changing so was the science of Defense and there's one item more that can attest to this armor do you hold that for me right yeah so this is a breastplate made by a friend of mine Ash and it's representative of one that we would have found as in core a little different to Tauton but not massively different it's very strong isn't it I mean it is very strong but it's just pushed in because it's it's a variable thickness and what it means by that is the threat of course comes predominantly from the front and so it's thicker at the front than it is at the sides and that saves you a bit of weight so how thick would it be in the in the middle of the front two and a half millimeters two and a half millimeters yeah something like that on this one I know is that designed predominantly to resist arrows or other weapons as well what was the main motivation for that strength well it certainly is going to be resisting arrows but of course an awful lot of their combat is going to be on foot to foot against other nights and so on so really it's a multi-purpose item um but it is the the layering the composite layer of the armor that helps to defend it against multiple threats so you've got a padded garment on here under here which is not massively thick but maybe four six eight layers over that you've got the mail then over that you've got the breastplate and the rest of the arm and the arms and the legs and everything else and it's that combination that really helps helps you to resist the the attack and this fluting is that to deflect arrows here yeah it's you can see that um fundamentally you've got the neck defenses here what you don't want is arrows hitting and skidding up ricocheting up under the neck and so that deflects them away and again it's exactly the same on tank armor now uh or at least certainly was second world war it's exactly the same thing you do not want the shells coming in just under the topping in yeah skipping under so that just sends them away so it's a same device for hundreds of years has worked grabbing our bows Joe and I are going to put the armor to the test wow the armor worked it did broke the arrow down yeah foreign that's really interesting now he's in trouble he's got two injuries here um three injuries but I mean despite the strength of this plate armor you've still you've made a hole in it which is amazing well you kind of got two things going on so one Joe's made a hole through it which is amazing you know arrows bent piece of wood making holes through sheet steel you don't imagine that but then the other thing is the armor is done exactly what it's meant to do that you've got a bit of deformation that takes some of the the shock out some of the force but then also it hasn't penetrated deeply yes there's a hole there but it's not a hole that's deep enough for the arrow to pass through and hurt the person inside so it looks a lot worse than it is to the guy inside it's nothing except that you've got a massive men facing 5 000 arches firing it you know at this range that would have been just terrifying soon battlefields would be filled with the sounds of gunpowder and small arms as cannons became the weapons of choice the days of the bow were numbered but they weren't over not just yet to see this evidence I've come to one of the most famous shipwrecks in the world the Mary Rose the Mary Rose was a veteran of many campaigns having served Tudor Kings for 33 years and it would be fighting in another anglo-french war that would see her luck finally run out sinking off the coast of England in 1545 the Mary Rose claimed the lives of nearly 500 crew members and lay undisturbed for over 400 years before she was raised in a daring feat of marine archeology I've come to meet a member of the team who was involved in the raising of the Mary Rose Dr Alex hildred well this is amazing I mean stand here this close is really special it feels like time travel so what do we know about how the ship sank well what we do know because we found the archaeological evidence is that all of the gun ports both on the starboard side and the port side all the lids were open and hinged above them she goes out of the fleet and we've got a very good image of that we call it the cowdre engraving but it's the encampment of the king's forces at Portsmouth and you see that the flagship Henry grassager is engaging the French galleys the Mary Rose has come out from behind her because the rest of them are sort of in wedge formation behind and fired the guns on her starboard side as she goes over and then turns and thinks so she's turning then she's turning to Port why she did it whether the ship was slightly sluggish whether she'd been hit earlier in the morning by by French gunfire we don't know the French actually say that they sank her but if she was something then any damage that would of course that would have been on the side of the ship that's now missing that's right and so we have crawled over the the side of the ship looking for battle damage there is after really nothing but you're you're right it would be on the side that's missing when a battleship comes back to Port the first thing they do is take everything off and fix it up what's unique about the Mary Rose is that she was engaged in combat so you had everything on board that a warship would have at the peak of its operation absolutely and we have an inventory for all of the vessels within the king's Fleet and you can tick off the things that so this is an inventory of what she should be if she was fully functional and we can tick off archaeologically all of the virtually all of those things that's amazing the artifacts preserved in this tragedy would help revolutionize our understanding of Tudor archery amongst the Cannons and Small Arms discovered were hundreds of warbows so we're now in the reserve collection of the museum where we're storing some of the longbows that aren't on display oh my God look at that that is amazing you've just opened open the door to a medieval barriers Workshop these are all from one chest in the lower deck so they were in store which is why they're in such light condition they haven't they haven't taken up any color from the sediments because they've been protected by the elves they look like new they do don't they have about 500 years old nearly well what fascinates me is they're bending away from the string the reverse curve shows that these are reflex bows their arms Bend away from the Archer When unstrung allowing the bow to be put under greater strength than the string is attached meaning they can be shorter but still retain the same draw weight as their full length counterparts perfect for the confined spaces of a ship but not all of the bows were found stored in boxes a handful were discovered loose suggesting they might have been in use only seconds before the Mary Rose sank this by difference are some of the ones that were found loose as opposed to they fell out of chests perhaps on the upper deck and you can see immediately the different coloration and some of them are actually damaged that was obviously broken and we've glued it back together again but that bend there is um probably where with a compression within the sediment this looked like it was strung this this this one has has was was was strung with the string when the ship went down there wasn't that's a strong boat you know this was probably in the hand of an Archer at the time the ship went down amazingly nearly 500 years later the Maker's Marks the signature of The Men Who crafted these bows for Henry VIII are still clearly visible oh yeah can you see it yes so the edge of the little little points being put in there's enough yeah there's a Maker's Mark yeah maybe the Mary Rose bows provide incredible evidence of the true role of archery in Tudor Warfare when I started to make bows most of the literature that described the English Longbow based opinions on Victorian Target bows which are are toys by comparison to these bows it was only when this weight of evidence turned up it was undeniable here was a light on on true medieval archery it's amazing well the Mary Rose is amazing because you've got things these these weapons that were used out of wood next to the newest bronze guns that were you know the last one was cast in 1543 and and it was you know it was huge expense to produce to throw to cast three tons of metal molten metal and cast these guns and here we have SIMPLE sticks I mean it's fantastic to see what an incredible collection 11 000 years in the making this is where our story of archery ends thanks for watching this video on the history Hit YouTube channel you can subscribe right here to make sure you don't miss any of our great films that are coming out or if you are a true history fan check out our special dedicated History Channel historyhit.tv you're gonna love it

Channel: History Hit

Views: 899,892

Keywords: history hit, history hit youtube, history hit tv, history hit documentary, history hit medieval, history hits youtube, mary rose, mary rose shipwreck, mary rose museum, mary rose longbow, mary rose sinking, longbow mary rose, tods workshop, tods workshop longbow, tods workshop bow, tods workshop youtube, joe gibbs, joe gibbs archer, arrow vs armor, longbow vs armor, ray mears bow and arrow, ray mears archery, history hit ray mears, history hit tods workshop

Id: Fh_axfTR738

Length: 12min 31sec (751 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 05 2022