Henry VIII's warship, the Mary Rose, wreaked havoc on the French navy for 34 years until she was wrecked in 1545. Salvaged from the sea in 1982, she now rests in the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth, England. Pieces of her helm recently traveled to SSRL and the ESRF in Grenoble, France, where intense x-rays pierced the wood to analyze the sulfur and iron within. Led by University of Stockholm Professor Magnus Sandström, researchers had studied another historical treasure, the Swedish warship Vasa, at SSRL in a similar way in 2001.

Measurements at SSRL revealed the presence of five major organosulfur compounds and iron sulfides as well as elemental sulfur, and allowed for the determination of their relative amounts. The ESRF data, obtained through scanning x-ray absorption spectro-microscopy, enabled the spatial mapping of reactive sulfur species in small samples of the oak timbers, such as the distribution of reduced and oxidized sulfur species. Exposed to the oxygen in air, the iron from corroded iron bolts in the ship catalyzes the oxidation of sulfur in the timbers into sulfuric acid, which could slowly degrade the wood until its stability is lost. The ship is in no immediate danger, however, because the acid is continually washed away during conservation. A spray treatment replaces the water in the degraded wood with aqueous polyethylene glycol, to prevent the wood from shrinking or developing cracks as it dries out. The researchers suggest that long-term preservation requires chemical treatments to remove or stabilize the remaining iron and sulfur compounds, and reducing humidity and access to oxygen.

M. Sandström, F. Jalilehvand, E. Damian, Y. Fors, U. Gelius, M. Jones, and M. Salomé, "Sulfur accumulation in the timbers of King Henry VIII's warship Mary Rose: A pathway in the sulfur cycle of conservation concern", PNAS, 102 (40), 14165-14170 (2005).