The artefacts were brass links believed to be fragments of chainmail and were excavated from the seabed during 19.

Their condition reflects very different treatment just after recovery, viz. complete cleaning and conservation, chemical corrosion inhibition and chloride removal only, and distilled water soaking only (to remove the chlorides). The brass composition has been determined for all three at least in the top 7 µm or so as Cu(73%)Zn(27%) from the lattice constant. Measurement of the peak widths showed significant differences in the crystallite size and microstrain between the three samples. All of the links are found to be almost chloride-free with the main corrosion products being spertiniite, sphalerite, zincite, covellite and chalcocite.

The balance of corrosion products between the links reflects the conservation treatment applied to one and points to different corrosion environments for the other two. On 19 July 1545, Tudor warship the Mary Rose sank in the Solent close to the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour in the UK during a battle with the French (Marsden, 2019 ). A significant fraction of the hull sank deep into the silts covering that area of the bed of the Solent and was, with its contents, preserved as a remarkable record of Tudor naval engineering and shipboard life (Rule, 1982 Jones, 2003 Marsden, 2003 ).Īround 500 lives were lost and attempts to recover the ship failed at the time (Marsden, 2019 Hildred, 1988 ). In 1982 the remaining part of the hull was recovered, and it is now housed in the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth, UK, alongside some of the >19 000 artefacts that were also recovered from the seabed (Marsden, 2003 Dobbs, 1995 Mealing, 2013 ). Artefacts of wood (including the hull), metal and many other materials were remarkably well preserved by the anaerobic conditions in the Eocene clays into which she sank.

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