White Ship
The White Ship sinking
| |
History | |
---|---|
Name | Blanche-Nef |
Out of service | 25 November 1120 |
Fate | Struck a submerged rock off Barfleur, Normandy |
General characteristics | |
Class and type | Sailing ship |
Installed power | Square sails |
Propulsion | Wind and oars |
The White Ship (French: la Blanche-Nef; Medieval Latin: Candida navis) was a vessel transporting many nobles, including the heir to the English throne, that sank in the English Channel near the Normandy coast off Barfleur during a trip from France to England on 25 November 1120.[1] Only one of approximately 300 people aboard, a butcher from Rouen, survived.[2]
Those who drowned included
Shipwreck
The White Ship was a newly refitted vessel captained by
According to chronicler
The ship's captain, Thomas FitzStephen, was ordered by the revellers to overtake the king's ship, which had already sailed.
William Adelin got into a small boat and could have escaped but turned back to try to rescue his half-sister, Matilda, when he heard her cries for help. His boat was swamped by others trying to save themselves, and William drowned along with them.[5] According to Orderic Vitalis, Berold (Beroldus or Berout), a butcher from Rouen, was the sole survivor of the shipwreck by clinging to the rock. The chronicler further wrote that when Thomas FitzStephen came to the surface after the sinking and learned that William Adelin had not survived, he let himself drown rather than face the king.[6]
One legend holds that the ship was doomed because priests were not allowed to board it and bless it with holy water in the customary manner.[7][a] For a complete list of those who did or did not travel on the White Ship, see Victims of the White Ship disaster.
Repercussions
A direct result of William Adelin's death was the period known as
One of Henry I's male relatives, Stephen of Blois, the king's nephew by his sister Adela, usurped Matilda as well as his older brothers William and Theobald to become king. Stephen had allegedly planned to travel on the White Ship but had disembarked just before it sailed;[4] Orderic Vitalis attributes this to a sudden bout of diarrhoea.
After Henry I's death, Matilda and her husband Geoffrey of Anjou, the founder of the
Contemporary historian William of Malmesbury wrote:
No ship that ever sailed brought England such disaster, none was so well known the wide world over. There perished then with William the king's other son Richard, born to him before his accession by a woman of the country, a high-spirited youth, whose devotion had earned his father's love; Richard earl of Chester and his brother Othuel, the guardian and tutor of the king's son; the king's daughter the countess of Perche, and his niece, Theobald's sister, the countess of Chester; besides all the choicest knights and chaplains of the court, and the nobles' sons who were candidates for knighthood, for they had hastened from all sides to join him, as I have said, expecting no small gain in reputation if they could show the king's son some sport or do him some service.[8]
Historical fiction
- Reference to the sinking of the White Ship is made in Ken Follett's novel The Pillars of the Earth (1989) and its later game adaptation. The ship's sinking sets the stage for the entire background of the story, which is based on the subsequent civil war between Matilda (referred to as Maud in the novel) and Stephen. In Follett's novel, it is implied that the ship may have been sabotaged; this implication is seen in the TV adaptation – even going so far as to show William Adelin assassinated whilst on a lifeboat – and the video game adaptation.
- Ellen Jones, The Fatal Crown (1991)
- Sharon Kay Penman describes the sinking in detail in her historical novel When Christ and His Saints Slept (1994).
- The sinking of the White Ship is briefly referenced in Glenn Cooper's novel The Tenth Chamber (2010).
- The White Ship sets the stage for the 2009 novel Hiobs Brüder (The Brothers of Job) by the German author Rebecca Gablé, which details the rise of Henry II of England, son of Empress Matilda.
- The long conflict between Stephen and Matilda is important in the Brother Cadfael series. This 20-book set of mysteries, by Ellis Peters, has a 12th-century Benedictine monk as its protagonist. Depending on the book, the conflict is either very important or serves as a backdrop to the plots. The sinking directly affects the outcome of the short story "A Light on the Road to Woodstock".
Poetry
- Felicia Hemans, "He Never Smiled Again", c. 1830[9]
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti, "The White Ship: a ballad"; first published 1881 in his collected Ballads and Sonnets.[10]
- Edwin Arlington Robinson, "Ballad of a Ship", 1891[11]
- Geoffrey Hill, "The White Ship". In his first book, For the Unfallen, 1959.
- Franck K. Lehodey, "White Ship". A graphic novel, 2011.
Notes
- ^ Guillaume de Nangis wrote that the White Ship sank because all the men aboard were sodomites. See: ’’Chron.’’ in Rolls series, ed. W. Stubbs (London, 1879), vol. 2, under A.D. 1120. This reflects the medieval belief that sin caused pestilence and disaster. See also: Codex Justinian, nov. 141. Another theory is expounded by Victoria Chandler, "The Wreck of the White Ship", in The final argument: the imprint of violence on society in medieval and early modern Europe, edited by Donald J. Kagay and L.J. Andrew Villalon (1998). Her theory discusses the possibility of it being a mass murder.
References
- ISBN 9780008296827.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - Simeon of Durham, Historia regum 100.199 (ed. T. Arnold, 1885, vol. 2, pp. 258–259); Eadmer, Historia nouorum in Anglia (ed. M. Rule, 1884, pp. 288–289), Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum 7.32 (ed. and trans. Greenway, 1996, pp. 466–467), Hugh the Chanter, History of the Church at York (ed. and trans. Johnson, 1990, pp. 164–165), Robert of Torigni, Gesta Normannorum ducum (ed. and trans. E. van Houts, 1995, vol. 2, pp. 216–219, 246–251, 274–277), and Wace, Roman de Rou, pt. iii, lines 10173–10262 (ed. A. Holden, 1973, vol. 2, pp. 262–266).
- ^ Elisabeth M.C, van Houts, 'The Ship List of William the Conqueror', Anglo-Norman Studies X: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 1987, ed. R. Allen Brown (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1988), pp. 172–173
- ^ a b c d Judith A. Green, Henry I: King of England and Duke of Normandy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 165
- ^ a b c d William M. Aird, Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy c. 1050–1134 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2008), p. 269
- ISBN 978-0-19-822243-9.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: others (link - ISBN 978-0143124924.
- ISBN 0-19-820678-X.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: others (link - ^ "The Poetical Works of Mrs. Hemans : electronic version". University of California, British Women Romantic Poets Project. Archived from the original on 5 March 2016. Retrieved 31 May 2014.
- ^ "Dante Gabriel Rossetti: 'The White Ship: a ballad'". Archived from the original on 28 June 2013. Retrieved 30 June 2013.
- ^ "Edwin Arlington Robinson – Ballad of a Ship". Americanpoems.com. Archived from the original on 14 September 2016. Retrieved 31 July 2016.