Archers continued to be a vital part of the army in the 16th Century. Over 3,500 arrows were recovered from the wreck of the Mary Rose, Henry VIII’s flagship which sunk in the Solent on 19 July 1545. The top image shows the arrows recovered from the wreck – although both the arrow heads and the feathers have deteriorated away, the marks from the binding of the feathers to the shafts are still visible. The bottom image shows how the arrows would have originally looked, with goose- or swan-feather flights. The majority of the arrows from the Mary Rose were of poplar.
Image reproduced with the kind permission of the Mary Rose Trust.