The new museum housing King Henry VIII’s 16th century warship, the Mary Rose, opens today after a GB pound 35 million construction project.
No one knows exactly how the flagship sank in 1545, off the coast of Portsmouth, but it became embedded in soft sediment on the ocean floor, keeping the hull incredibly well preserved.
Brought to the surface in 1982 and housed in a temporary museum ever since, the Mary Rose has now been reunited with more than 19,000 artefacts from aboard the ship in a state-of-the-art museum.
The new museum has been protected by a fire system from Kentec. The structural frame of the wave-like building has a 60-minute fire resistance, while Kentec has supplied an L1 automatic fire detection system — the highest level of life protection system available — built around a four-loop addressable fire detection system.
Detectors are placed throughout the building to provide the earliest possible warning of a fire. In addition, part of the evacuation strategy includes open stairs, allowing for a simultaneous evacuation of the entire museum.
