A man tried to sell a cannonball on the internet, claiming it was from the Tudor warship Mary Rose.

Police and coastguards raided his house in Westbourne, near Chichester, after the cannonball was offered on auction web site eBay.

They were alerted to the sale, with a reserve price of £5,000, by The Mary Rose Trust and the Receiver of Wreck.

Officers found 14 of the 16lb cannonballs under a barbecue.

An expert from the trust confirmed the cannonballs were not from Henry VIII's flagship that sank in the Solent in 1545 but probably 18th or 19th Century cannonballs recovered from the shores of the River Hamble in Hampshire.

A police spokeswoman said two officers from the Hampshire force's marine unit visited the house.

She said: "The man led the officers out into the back garden and showed them the shot under his barbecue. He said they were given to him by a family friend who said they were from the Mary Rose.

"While he was away, another member of the family had decided to sell the cannonball on eBay.

"Both men are co-operating fully with police who are trying to determine whether an offence has been committed."

The trust said any artefacts purporting to be from the wreck raised in 1982 are either fake or illegally obtained because it has a policy that all items from the ship are kept at the Mary Rose collection in Portsmouth.

John Lippiett, chief executive of the trust, said: "There should not be any artefacts from the Mary Rose in private hands apart from a few curios made from Mary Rose timber recovered in the 1830s.

"We are relieved the shot turned out to be nothing to do with the Mary Rose but are not pleased that the vendor tried to pass them off as genuine and even used a photograph taken without authority from our website."

The cannonballs were inspected by the trust's curator of ordnance, Alexzandra Hildred, who confirmed they had none of the features found on shot from the Mary Rose.

An archaeologist has been called in to investigate the origin of the cannonballs.

The police spokeswoman added that if the shot was taken from an archaeological site without informing the Receiver of Wreck, then an offence could have been committed.