Margaret Rule, archaeologist, 1928-2015

In October 1982, an estimated 60m people worldwide watched as the Tudor warship Mary Rose emerged from the seabed off southern England. It was one of the most ambitious outside broadcasts ever mounted by the BBC.

A yellow steel cradle supported the fragile timbers as they broke the surface for the first time since Henry VIII's flagship went down with the loss of more than 500 men in 1545. The find was then transferred to a Portsmouth dockside hangar, where it became a popular tourist attraction.

Mastermind of the 11-hour mission was Margaret Rule, who has died aged 86. As archaeological director of the project, the self-taught Rule had been involved with the Mary Rose since the late 1960s. She joined a team first led by Alexander McKee, a local amateur diver who was obsessed by seeking out this legendary wreck in the Solent.

Once the ship was located in 1971 - half of its hull miraculously well preserved in mud - the group began to work on a plan to bring it on to land. To see the site for herself, Rule learnt to dive. She made hundreds of trips into the depths of the chilly strait, where visibility was often less than a metre.

In 2013, Rule told the BBC that Prince Charles's interest in the Mary Rose, which he too studied underwater as well as becoming patron of the project, had been crucial in attracting the funds to raise the ship: "We couldn't have done it without him . . . When he goes down [and] says 'I've seen it, I've seen it with my own eyes and it can be brought up', then everyone is supporting us and British industry comes behind us."

Rule's early life and work, however, gave no indication of the maritime focus that was to come. She was born Margaret Martin in Buckinghamshire on September 27 1928 but the family soon moved to London, where the young Margaret stayed throughout the Blitz. Her academic career at University College London, where she was expecting to read chemistry, was cancelled abruptly when new students were asked to leave to free up places for the returning servicemen who were considered a higher priority.

Instead, she took night classes that led to a research post at International Chemical Company, where she worked on a team developing toothpaste. There she met Arthur Rule, a microbiologist. The couple married in 1949 and later settled in Sussex. Becoming increasingly passionate about English history, they travelled to sites and digs in their spare time.

When their son Nick (who survives her) was born in 1958, Margaret gave up her job and helped to set up a group of local archaeologists who scoured Sussex and Hampshire to, as she put it, "see what we could find". They found something extraordinary.

In 1960, an engineer laying pipes outside Chichester phoned Mr Rule to say his workmen had come across some interesting tile work in a trench. When Mr Rule visited the site he saw it was a mosaic that had been part of a Roman home. Once the landowner had been persuaded to allow a trial dig, the site at Fishbourne was revealed to be the floor of the nation's largest Roman palace.

With Margaret as curator, it opened to the public in 1968. Among the VIP visitors was the Prince of Wales, a contact who was later to prove vital.

Rule stayed at Fishbourne until 1979, then shifted her attention to the Mary Rose project, where she remained as research director until 1994.

She was also a key figure in the campaign to pass the Protection of Wrecks Act in 1973, which helped to curb the desecration and looting of submerged sites.

A pragmatist too, she worked with a wide range of organisations and maritime explorers, including Robert Ballard, who found the wreck of the Titanic. In the 1990s she took part in a live broadcast to schools across America as she and Prof Ballard steered a remote control vehicle to explore a wreck in the Great Lakes.

In recent years, Rule became involved with a plan to investigate the first HMS Victory, which sank in 1744 during a storm in the English Channel. Although by now confined to a wheelchair, Rule remained active in several maritime projects until her death this month.

Rule's greatest legacy, though, is the magnificent £27m Mary Rose museum in Portsmouth's historic dockyard, which displays the ship's hull and thousands of recovered objects in a climate controlled environment. Arthur died last year but the couple had both lived to see the museum open in 2013. "This is a duty to the men of the Mary Rose. It is their monument," Rule said at the time. Now it is also hers.

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