The wreck that revealed the Mary Rose

Few of the tourists who gaze up to admire one of London's most famous landmarks, Nelson's Column, would realise that its column's topmost point is made from the salvaged remains of an unheralded 18th Century warship.

But the HMS Royal George can lay an even greater claim to posterity than providing the foundations of the world-famous statue in honour of perhaps the most celebrated naval hero in British history.

According to naval historian Dr John Bevan, the largely forgotten flagship, which sank in the Solent at Spithead in August 1782, helped divers to locate the wreckage of the Mary Rose in the 1830s - a full 150 years before the stricken vessel was raised from the seabed.

More than 900 people died when the Royal George sank, including 300 women and 60 children who were visiting the ship which was due to head for Gibraltar with HMS Victory....