30+ years of the raising of the ship....where did that time go? I remember the blanket BBC Breakfast news (Bough, Scott et al) at the time wondering if it was worth the expense.

The visitor centre looks good, the artifacts look pretty good for mundane tudor items but has this been a worthwhile historical populist pursuit or an expensive academic excercise?

...and when is an historical artifact an historical artifact? When its been preserved in PEG solution and turned into a virtual plastic cast of the original thats the cynical chemist in me, the professional interest in using chemicals to stabilise and virtually replace the natural structure of the original...which you have to do to preserve fragile leather and wood and organic material, but a facimile copy would be just about the same for less cost methinks.....and would keep the old spitting image puppet people back in business

Techniques of this type are used in every museum; their use does not lessen the significance of rare artifacts - which would just vanish without them. Egyptian mummies, for example, would not exist without modern preservation methods.

However, 19,000 Mary Rose artifacts have been saved in Portsmouth, as well as a major part of Henry VIII's 16th century ship. Laying very close to Horatio Nelson's Victory - which, open to the elements, also requires a of lot TLC nowadays.