An estimated 60 million people across the world watched the hull of the Mary Rose surface from the Solent after 437 years. As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of that day, MIKE FORD relives the extraordinary moment he saw the ship rise from her watery grave.

IT was a rare moment which etched a landmark into maritime history in the south - the day that King Henry V111's famous Tudor warship, the Mary Rose, was lifted from a watery grave on the bed of the Solent.

Yesterday, the Mary Rose Trust celebrated the 20th anniversary of that momentous day when an estimated worldwide television audience of 60 million people watched as the hull of the Mary Rose broke the surface of the Solent after 437 years underwater.

Her raising in 1982 was the culmination of an 11-year underwater excavation programme following the wreck's rediscovery in 1971 by a team led by Alexander McKee. The event has become a seminal moment in maritime archaeology and a memory cherished in the south's nautical heritage.

Today, the hull is on permanent exhibition as part of Ports-mouth's historic dockyard, although the ship hall only re-opened on Thursday after a spell of being closed for engineering and electrical maintenance, but the Mary Rose Museum has been fully open.

Almost six million people have since visited the Mary Rose Ship Hall and Museum. The hull is currently undergoing an active conservation programme and the museum displays a selection of more than 1,000 artefacts retrieved from the wreck detailing the everyday life of the Tudor sailor on board.

Twenty years ago it was a rare individual whose imagination was not fired by the raising of the ship from the Solent seabed.

I stood on the sea wall at Southsea Castle the day the ship was brought to the surface by a team of divers from the Royal Engineers at Marchwood and can still remember that awesome sense of a link with the distant past, of tradition and maritime posterity.

The Mary Rose provides an extraordinary perspective of a time-warp. The ship lay silently on the Solent seabed for 50 years before Shakespeare began his great work, a century before the civil war, two centuries before the Jacobite Rebellion, three before Dickens and the Brntes, and four before the end of the Second World War.

The sense of impending anticipation the day that the remains of the hull was finally raised was immeasurable.

Prince Charles was a great supporter of the project and was on hand to watch the raising.

It was a marvellous achievement and one of the great moments of archaeology of the last century.

To those of us there at the time it was almost too good to be true as the first timbers rose above the surface of the water.

Then there was a sickening moment when with a mighty crash the lifting frame at one end smashed to within inches of the Mary Rose. It caused initial horror among supporters.

Securing pins were reinforced all round, and then the frame was lifted clear of the water and she hung there while a barge was manoeuvred into place.

Prince Charles toasted the success of the project and fourteen and a half hours after the project began, the Tudor warship made a triumphant entrance into harbour to a carnival atmosphere of boats, people, sirens, fireworks and thousands of flashing lights.

But in maritime history, the Mary Rose is significant because she is the only 16th century warship recovered and on display in the world.

Her design displays the evolution in naval tactics adopted by Henry VIII.

She was one of a new breed of ships, designed to cripple opponents at a distance, rather than replicate a land battle at sea by engaging at close quarters.

The weaponry recovered from her has been of vital importance in the study of domestic armament manufacture - an industry really developed by Henry VIII.

She sank on July 19, 1545 as she was about to stem a French invasion off the coast of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

Because of the rapidity of the sinking and its subsequent preservation in the Solent silt, the unique artefact assemblage is representative of the equipment, stores, armaments and personal possessions of the crew.

She has been likened to a Tudor time capsule.

The remains of the crew permit the study of the diet, diseases and occupation of a coherent population.

The development and use of conservation techniques by The Mary Rose Trust are at the forefront of world conservation practice.