Mary Rose in the context of "Tudor period"

A tool is an object that can extend an individual's ability to modify features of the surrounding environment or help them accomplish a particular task, and proto-typically refers to solid hand-operated non-biological objects with a single broad purpose that lack multiple functions, unlike machines or computers. Although human beings are proportionally most active in using and making tools in the animal kingdom, as use of stone tools dates back hundreds of millennia, and also in using tools to make other tools, many animals have demonstrated tool use in both instances.

Early human tools, made of such materials as stone, bone, and wood, were used for the preparation of food, hunting, the manufacture of weapons, and the working of materials to produce clothing and useful artifacts and crafts such as pottery, along with the construction of housing, businesses, infrastructure, and transportation. The development of metalworking made additional types of tools possible. Harnessing energy sources, such as animal power, wind, or steam, allowed increasingly complex tools to produce an even larger range of items, with the Industrial Revolution marking an inflection point in the use of tools. The introduction of widespread automation in the 19th and 20th centuries allowed tools to operate with minimal human supervision, further increasing the productivity of human labor.

A round shot (also called solid shot or simply ball) is a solid spherical projectile without explosive charge, launched from a gun. Its diameter is slightly less than the bore of the barrel from which it is shot. A round shot fired from a large-caliber gun is also called a cannonball.

The cast iron cannonball was introduced by French artillery engineers after 1450; it had the capacity to reduce traditional English castle wall fortifications to rubble. French armories would cast a tubular cannon body in a single piece, and cannonballs took the shape of a sphere initially made from stone material. Advances in gunpowder manufacturing soon led the replacement of stone cannonballs with cast iron ones.

The Mary Rose Trust is a limited charitable trust based in Portsmouth in the United Kingdom. Its primary aims are to preserve, display and spread knowledge about the 16th century warship Mary Rose which sank in the Solent on 19 July 1545 and was salvaged by the Trust in October 1982.

The Mary Rose Trust runs the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.

The English longbow was a powerful medieval type of bow, about 6 ft (1.8 m) long. While it is debated whether it originated in England or in Wales from the Welsh bow, by the 14th century the longbow was being used by both the English and the Welsh as a weapon of war and for hunting. English longbows were effective against the French during the Hundred Years' War, particularly in the battles of Sluys (1340), Crécy (1346), Poitiers (1356), and Agincourt (1415). They were less successful later on, as longbowmen had their lines broken at the Battle of Verneuil (1424), although the English won a decisive victory there; they were completely routed at the Battle of Patay (1429) when they were charged by the French mounted men-at-arms before they had prepared the terrain and finished defensive arrangements. The Battle of Pontvallain (1370) had also previously shown longbowmen were not particularly effective when not given the time to set up defensive positions.

No English longbows survive from the period when the longbow was dominant (c. 1250–1450), probably because bows became weaker, broke, and were replaced rather than being handed down through generations. More than 130 bows survive from the Renaissance period, however. More than 3,500 arrows and 137 whole longbows were recovered from the Mary Rose, a ship of Henry VIII's navy that sank at Portsmouth in 1545.

Henry Grace à Dieu ("Henry, Thanks be to God"), also known as Great Harry, was an English carrack or "great ship" of the King's Fleet in the 16th century, and in her day the largest warship in the world. Contemporary with Mary Rose, Henry Grace à Dieu was even larger, and served as Henry VIII's flagship.

Built by William Bond (master shipwright) under the direction of Robert Brygandine (clerk of the ships), she had a large forecastle four decks high, and a stern castle two decks high. She was 165 feet (50.29 m) long, measuring 1,000 tons burthen and having a complement of 700 men. She was ordered by Henry VIII, probably to replace Grace Dieu (later renamed Regent), which had been destroyed at the Battle of Saint-Mathieu in August 1512.