Alan Bax, pioneer of nautical archaeology who helped to find the Mary Rose – obituary

Lieutenant Commander Alan Bax, who has died aged 93, helped to find the Mary Rose and pioneered the development of nautical archaeology.

Bax’s passing interest in nautical archaeology was stimulated in 1965 when he led a four-day expedition to the Shetlands, which recovered silver and gold coins from the Dutch East Indiaman de Liefde, lost in 1711. Importantly, Bax learned about the difficulty in determining whether the wreck lay inshore on the island of Housay or at another secret location in deeper water, and of the rivalry between professional divers, amateurs and treasure-hunters, and the scepticism of land-based archeologists.

Armed with this experience, Bax joined Bill Majer, Alexander McKee and Margaret Rule to form the Mary Rose Committee, which searched for the wreck of Henry VIII’s flagship, sunk in 1545. Anticipating the Protection of Wrecks Act (1973), they took a lease of the seabed in 1967.

When McKee, representing the Southsea branch of the British Sub-Aqua Club, and Bax, representing the Committee for Nautical Archaeology, disagreed over the exact location, the discovery of an 1841 survey by Commander Louis Sheringham in the office of the Hydrographer of the Navy, where Bax was working, resolved their dispute. The position of Mary Rose was clearly marked on Sheringham’s chart, and when Bax had this position transferred to a modern chart, he found it was on the edge of the scour mark caused by “McKee’s wreck”, where the ship herself was subsequently found in 1971.

Bax, a trained shallow water diver, became determined to improve the circumstances in which underwater wrecks were examined and conserved, and the skills of those diving. In 1971, when he retired from the Navy, he and fellow diver Jim Gill founded SNAP, the School for Nautical Archaeology Plymouth, at Fort Bovisand, Bax investing his entire gratuity in the project. He always regretted that he never found a business which would enjoy the acronym of CRACKLE, and link with another business he owned called POP, Plymouth Ocean Products.

Many of the volunteers who dived on Mary Rose were trained at SNAP, and benefited from the courses and annual conferences where Bax provided a welcoming environment for professionals and amateurs to appreciate each other’s roles and to advance the new discipline of nautical archaeology. Eventually some two thousand recreational divers learned about underwater archaeology, photography and medicine and gained Royal Yachting Association qualifications on courses which became the templates for worldwide programmes.

When in 1975 there was a shortage of commercial divers for the exploitation of oil and gas deposits in the North Sea, the Fort Bovisand Underwater Centre was established as a government-approved commercial training centre, “the Fort” becoming a spiritual home for many divers. The harbour was often filled with club boats as well as the resident training boats, and there was always a yarn to be heard in the bar after a day of hard physicality or of lectures.

The school was the third largest outlet for Courage beer in the West Country, and all was governed by “the commander’s” smiles, his smart cravat, readiness to offer support and encouragement, and his bushy eyebrows.

Margaret Rule, doyenne of the Mary Rose Committee, called Bax “godfather to most underwater projects in the United Kingdom”.

Alan David Bax was born on January 22 1932 at Ardleigh, Essex, to Thomas Bax, a gardener, and Clara Woodward, a secretary. Educated at Chelmsford grammar school, he joined HMS Ganges as a boy seaman in 1947. He prospered in the Navy and after being commissioned and promoted he specialised in torpedo and anti-submarine (TAS) warfare, and qualified as a shallow-water diver.

Other wrecks which Bax dived on included HMS Coronation (1691) near Penlee, HMS Association (1707) in the Scillies, and the “Mewstone Cannon” site off Plymouth.

Bax was also a founding member of the International Maritime Archaeological & Shipwreck Society (IMASS), when it grew out of the South West section of the Nautical Archaeological Society, promoting the interests and standards of amateur divers and non-academic researchers and historians who continue to undertake the majority of the work on the UK’s protected wrecks.

Bax married three times. A fourth partner died in 2023, and he is survived by a son and two daughters, another son having predeceased him.

Lieutenant Commander Alan Bax, born January 22 1932, died February 18 2024