Book Titles.

1. Against The Odds:Battles At Sea 1591-1949
2. A Heritage of Ships
3. A World Too Vast: The Four Voyages Of Columbus
4. Black Saturday
5. Caen: Anvil of Victory
6. Death Raft
7. Dresden 1945: The Devil`s Tinderbox
8. El Alamein:Ultra And Three Battles
9. Farming The Sea
10. From Merciless Invaders
11. Gordon of Khartoum
12. History Under The Sea
13. How We Found the Mary Rose
14. H.M.S. Bounty
15. Ice Crash, Strike from the Sky
16. Into The Blue
17. King Henry VIII's Mary Rose
18. Race For The Rhine Bridges
19. Strike From The Sky
20. Tarquin`s Ship
21. The Coal Scuttle Brigade
22. The Friendless Sky
23. The Golden Wreck
24. The Mosquito Log
25. The Queen`s Corsair
26. Vimy Ridge

King Henry the VIII's flagship and the Mary Rose Trust - donations urgently needed! for the next phase of her preservation.

Was she found by -

1. Alexander PC McKee OBE by starting and supervising Project Solent Ships in its many incarnations?
2. Professor Harold Edgerton and John Mills with side-scanning sonar pingers?
3. Former submariner Don Bullivant, fireman George Clarke and Tom Smith "knocking on wood" with iron probes through several feet of mud?
4. Hampshire Fire Brigade by providing the pumps that blasted the mud away.
5. The unknown fishermen, with their snagged nets?
6. The Dean brothers?
7. Peter Aitcheson on behalf of William Selwood Ltd. by rigging up air-lifts to take the newly blasted mud up and out of the field of view/operation?
8. Reg Cloudsdale, a founder member of Project Solent Ships, when he was the first person for over 200 years to touch a recently revealed timber?
9. All of the above and too many other early helpers to list, most of whom gave their time freely, hence the title of Alexander McKee OBE's second Mary Rose book titled 'How we found the Mary Rose'?

Alexander McKee, with the aid of his research team on Project Solent Ships re-discovered the Mary Rose, King Henry the VIII's flagship.

The Mary Rose Project is already impressive and looks set to become one of the top historical sites in the world. Many people are not aware however, that Alexander McKee started Project Solent Ships which became the original (not the later copycat) Mary Rose Special Branch 0551 of the Southsea Branch of the British Sub-Aqua Club. Don Bullivant, one of the founder members of the Mary Rose Special Branch, number 0551, of the Southsea Branch of the British Sub-Aqua Club and Project Solent Ships, said -

"Project Solent Ships was Mac."

His fellow members of the original Mary Rose Special Branch, number 0551, of the Southsea Branch of the British Sub-Aqua Club and Project Solent Ships wrote the following epitaph for his grave stone -

"This stone, recovered from the bed of the Solent by members of the original Mary Rose Special Branch, number 551, of the Southsea Branch of the British Sub-Aqua Club, is dedicated to the memory of Alexander McKee OBE, whose initiation of Project Solent Ships 1965 led to his re-discovery of the Mary Rose, Flagship of Henry VIII, and its eventual recovery from the Solent."

Below are a number of further credits, albeit somewhat lost in the haystack of information that is the internet, but clearly some efforts are being made to set the record straight and give credit where it is due -

• Mary Rose Project started by...
• thenewscentre
• the-tudors
• bruzelius
• nationalarchives
• BBC
• wikipedia

The Swedish warship the Vasa fully restored and on display in it own museum in Stockholm today, inspired him in his search for the Mary Rose. The Vasa remained in excellent condition by being protected from erosion, decay and wood eating marine creatures by becoming buried deep in the mud. Even though wood usually gets eaten by marine worms within 200 years in the waters of the Solent Alexander felt that this held out much hope for re-discovering enough of the Mary Rose for her to be a veritable treasure trove of informatin and provide a huge collection of artifacts of Tudor England. Ultimately, he was to be proved right.

To help ensure that the Mary Rose National Lottery award of £21,000,000 is fully utilised and the next phase of this amazing project and tourist attraction goes ahead as planned and is completed on schedule by 2011 ready for the London Olympics in 2012 another £14,000,000 has to be raised by the Mary Rose Trust. The National Lottery award is featured at -

• Mary Rose Museum
• National Historic Ships
• Portsmouth Historic Dockyard

You may wish to donate anything from £5 on up at -

The diving comrades who joined him in his search deserve more recognition for the crucial part they played in this project. They gave their own time freely, faced many dangers and overcame countless technical and engineering challenges even inventing new equipment, like the Dean brothers before them.

The hazards faced by the original team included -

• The risk of being swept away by dangerous tides
• Potentially fatal risk of being buried in a mud trench on the sea bed
• Getting diving time and decompression calculations wrong when cold, wet and hungry
• Inventing special equipment and working methods