Press releases/Mary Rose Trust donation
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This press release is currently a draft; it has not yet been released. Expected release 3 January 2010. |
The Mary Rose Trust of Portsmouth, England are donating a number of photographs relating to the salvaged 16th century warship Mary Rose to complement a substantial rewrite and expansion of the Mary Rose article.
The Mary Rose, once the pride of Henry VIII's navy, was raised by the Mary Rose Trust from the bottom of the Solent just off Portsmouth in 1982, 437 years after it accidentally foundered while engaging a French fleet. The project of salvaging the ship was a major undertaking and proved to be a milestone within the field of maritime archaeology. When the Mary Rose sunk, it became a time capsule of 16th century Tudor England. The thousands of artefacts found in and around the ship when it was raised and excavated provided important clues to the life of the men of all classes that served on her in the 1540s, about shipbuilding, naval warfare and various other fields.
This image donation means that the Mary Rose Trust is the first UK-based organization to make an image donation to Wikimedia. The collaboration is the result of negotiations by Peter Isotalo and representatives of Wikimedia Sweden (Lennart Guldbrandsson) and Wikimedia UK (Mike Peel). These were initiated in the second half of 2009 as part of an effort to improve the information on the Mary Rose available on Wikipedia.
The donation consists of 57 previously unpublished photographs. 55 of these show artefacts from the Mary Rose, including weapons, tools and personal items, taken specially for the Wikipedia donation. The final two are photographs of the final stages of the salvage operation in October 1982. One of these images is displayed on the right, after being digitally restored by Durova, a Wikimedia volunteer.
(The rest will be uploaded on 3 January 2010.)
EDITORS' NOTES
About Wikimedia Commons:
Wikimedia Commons is a free image and media file repository, and is a sister project to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It was started on 7 September 2004, and is operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. It currently contains over 5.5 million freely licensed images and media files.
About Wikimedia UK:
Wikimedia UK is an independent organisation that supports free and open knowledge throughout the United Kingdom, including promoting and supporting the projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation.
About the Wikimedia Foundation:
The Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is the US-based non-profit organisation that operates some of the largest collaboratively-edited reference projects in the world. These include Wikipedia, one of the world's 10 most-visited websites, and Wikimedia Commons.
Further information:
- Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/
- Mary Rose Trust:
Contact details: Michael Peel, Chair, Wikimedia UK
- Email: michael.peel@wikimedia.org.uk
- Phone: +44 (0)7988 013 646