900 years ago today in 1120 A.D., just offshore from Barfleur, Normandy, a newly built vessel known as the White Ship set off across the English channel in the bleak dark of winter and ran afoul of a rock beneath the waves.
In what was perhaps the closest medieval equivalent to the sinking of the Titanic, about 300 lives were lost in the disaster.
The maritime tragedy would have been of little consequence outside of this only amongst those who drowned was none other than William Adelin, heir to the throne of England.
His sudden death was to cast the Anglo-Norman realm into a state of chaos that would pave the way for the Plantagenets to take power.
Before this freak accident occurred, all had seemed to be in good order with the Anglo-Norman world.
Henry I, the fourth son of William the Conqueror, had seized the throne in 1100 A.D after his brother William II was killed during a hunting trip.
Since then he had defeated and imprisoned his rival brother, Robert Curthose, and crushed all those barons who opposed him.
He had convinced the French king to recognise his son’s ascendancy to the Duchy of Normandy. He ruled with a harsh but fair hand, bringing about peace, order and prosperity to the realm.
There was one small problem to Henry’s grasp on power however; he had sired many children, but not many heirs.
The king had over a dozen children of whom only two were the offspring of his wife and queen, Matilda of Scotland.
Though he treated his illegitimate children well, they could never succeed to the throne.
All the hopes of both the realm and the monarchy thus rested solely upon Henry’s only son, William the Aethling.
William’s mother, Matilda of Scotland, was a direct descendant of Edmund Ironside and Edward the Confessor and was a daughter of Margaret of Wessex.
William was thus the living embodiment of both the new Norman England and the old Anglo-Saxon England.
Any remaining resentments that still might have been simmering amongst the English populace since the populace, would be put to rest with his accession.
Given his Scottish heritage too it was hoped that his rise to power would tie Scotland closer to England. In short, much and more was hoped for with this princeling.
In 1120 A.D he had just been recognised by Louis VI of France as the new Duke of Normandy, taking the office which all his forefathers had held before him.
With Normandy secure, King Henry and his son made ready to return to England. As they made ready to depart from Barfleur, the king was approached by a captain by the name of Thomas Fitzstephen whose father, Stephen Fitzairard, had captained William the Conqueror’s flagship back in 1066 A.D. Hoping to follow in his father’s footsteps he offered to take Henry across the channel in his new vessel, the White Ship.
Well-constructed out of the finest materials, it was a ship that seemed destined for greatness.
Though Henry turned down the offer since he had already committed to another ship, he bade that its maiden voyage be honoured with the presence of his heir William, and his illegitimate children, Countess Matilda Fitzroy and Richard of Lincoln.
To these prestigious passengers were also added many other nobles, courtiers, and esteemed members of the king’s household.
Before the White Ship set sail from Barfleur, William provided wine in plenty to both passengers and crew alike.
As the ship left the harbour, the drunken revellers challenged Fitzstephen to try and outpace the king’s own ship which had gone ahead of them. Confident of the capabilities of his new ship, the captain obliged.
No sooner had they set off in the dark however than they rammed into a rock which tore open a gash in the ship’s port side.
The vessel swiftly took on water and began to capsize. With his life being of the greatest importance, William was hurried onto a boat to get clear of the wreck.
As he was rowing away however he heard the cries of his half sister Matilda and returned for her.
As he came upon the ship, the other passengers swarmed over his boat and capsized it. All of them drowned.
Fitzstephen himself managed to hold onto the rock that had slain his ship but when he heard that the heir to the throne had died he let go and allowed the waves to take him, preferring to drown rather than face King Henry.
The tragic loss of life aside, the full effect of the White Ship disaster was not to be felt for another fifteen years when Henry I died in 1135 A.D. During that time, having failed to produce another son that could replace William, Henry tried to secure the position of his legitimate daughter, Mathilda, whom he had married off first to the Emperor Heinrich V of the Holy Roman Empire and then to Geoffrey Plantagenet of Anjou.
Though the barons pledged themselves to her, they remained uneasy about supporting her claim, not least because her husband from Anjou was frequently at loggerheads with his Norman counterparts.
Amidst this uncertainty, her cousin, Stephen of Blois – who was meant to be on the White Ship with William but had disembarked at the last minute – stepped in and claimed the throne of England.
This coincidence has led some historians to theorise that Stephen may have had a hand in the White Ship’s sinking in the first place and that far from being an accident it was in fact a political power grab.
Whether it was or not it is irrelevant however since either way the heir to the throne was removed from the picture and the succession put into doubt.
The Empress Matilda did not take lightly to Stephen’s seizure of her father’s throne and for almost twenty years thereafter the two cousins warred with each other in a dynastic civil war that came to be known as the Anarchy.
Finally in 1154 A.D, after years of stalemate, Stephen died and was succeeded by Matilda’s son, Henry II, the first Plantagenet King of England.
The dynasty which he established would rule England until the deposition of Richard II in 1399 A.D by the Lancastrian branch of the family.
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