Mary Rose is a magical time capsule in Portsmouth

Tourists flock to Pompeii to drink in that unique sense of history frozen in a single moment in time.  Here in Hampshire, we can get the same experience without leaving the county at the Mary Rose museum.

Henry VIII welcomes you

Granted, there's no Vesuvius looming, and you'll be looking over the Solent rather than the Bay of Naples.  But you have the same extraordinary sense of time travel, and the museum (located within the Portsmouth Historic Dockyards) brings together artefacts, architecture and story in a way that leaves the Italian city in the volcanic dust.

The pride of Henry VIII's navy, the Mary Rose sunk in battle in 1545 and returned to the surface in 1982.  Experts have been conserving her sodden timbers ever since, and the process is nearing completion.  An innovative new museum opened in May 2013 that brings the ship … as she was on her last day … back to glorious life.

A covering of volcanic ash preserved Pompeii's story.  Boarding nets did the same for the Mary Rose.  This netting, strung over the top of all the exposed decks to prevent enemies coming aboard, kept everyone and everything in when she went down.  Meaning archeologists weren't just bringing up a ship.  They had everything from cannons to workmen's tools, skeletons to personal possessions to capture that world, at that moment.

The museum cleverly lays out the artefacts where they would have been on the ship, and invites you to explore through the stories of different crew members.  We don't know their names, but skeletons, possessions and their location on the wreck lead us to the master carpenter, the cook, the physician, etc.

The Mary Rose settled on her starboard side and sunk into the silt, thus half was preserved and half washed away.  She's now sitting up, that starboard side a ghostly skeleton in a vast, glass-enclosed hall.  The displays of artefacts occupy the space that would have been her port side, prow and stern, the building's lines re-creating the rest of the ship.  She's still drying out; in 2016 the glass partition will come down and the galleries will seem even more a part of the wider vessel.

Wander where the officer's quarters were, and see the ship's china, the contents of the officer's personal chests, even the skeleton of the ship's dog.  Elsewhere you can explore the quarters and armaments of the fighting men.  There's an interactive section where you can try your strength against a weighted machine that mimics a longbow.  In the bowels of the ship, see how the kitchen worked and where food was stored.  Throughout, serious commentary and actual artefacts are matched with educational games on video screens:  get your distance calculations right to hit the French ships; stock the galley correctly to feed both officers and men.  This place would be a blast with kids.

We spent about two hours here before we became overwhelmed by the sheer amount of interesting stuff.  And that's not even considering the scientific story of the rescue and preservation, which is worth a visit on its own.  There's so much here, you could go many times before you got bored.

It's a good thing for locals, therefore, that a single entry ticket is good for return visits for a whole year.  I'm embarrassed that it took me 18 months to get here after the new museum opened.  I'm vowing to do back before my return ticket expires.