Someone laughs at her mishap and it is then that we realize something is going wrong. The Mary Rose was reefing her sails and turning against the wind to get her starboard guns to bear on the French just as the gust of wind caught her. She heels over in the sea, dangerously low, her sails dipping towards the waves, her beautiful square sails no longer proudly upright above her arched decks, but now at an angle, odd and ugly.

“What are you doing?” the king bellows, as if anyone can answer him. “What the hell are you doing?”

She is like a horse that has taken a curve too tight. You can see a horse with his legs going from under him, running harder and faster, and yet everything happens very slowly, but with a terrible inexorability.

“Right her!” Henry howls like a dog, and now everyone is beside him at the castle wall, leaning out as if they will ever hear us shouting instructions. Someone is screaming “No! No! No!” as the beautiful proud ship, her standards still rippling, goes farther and farther over on her side and then we see her slowly lie on her side like a fallen bird, half in, half out of the scudding waves.

We can’t hear them scream. The sailors are trapped belowdecks as the water rushes in through the open gun ports, and they cannot climb up the narrow ladders in the waist of the ship. They drown in their own coffin as she takes them gently, softly down. We can hear the men on the upper deck. They are clinging to the boarding nets, which are now entrapping them, trying to slash them away. Some of the fighting men jump down from the ship’s turrets and stab with their pikes at the ropes or hack with their swords at the thick net. But they can’t get the men free, can’t open the nets. Our soldiers and sailors die like netted mackerel, struggling to breathe against the mesh.

The free men on top tumble off the castles like so many toy soldiers, like the little lead men that Edward plays with, and their leather jackets drag them down in moments. Those who have helmets feel them fill with cold sea water before they can untie the straps. Thick boots drag their owners down, heavy plate armor strapped on knee and breast plunges men in a rush to the bottom. I can hear a voice crying: “No, no, no.”