The white ship, p.16
The White Ship, page 16
Henry had never before crossed the Channel later in the year than September. But the weather was set fair, and as long as a southerly wind could be harnessed, it looked like an uneventful voyage was in store on the Blanche-Nef – a name that, when translated into English, becomes the White Ship.
ELEVEN
Bound for England
There in the harbour stood the ring-prowed ship,
The prince’s vessel, icy, eager to sail.
From the epic poem Beowulf
Henry and his travelling companions had waited for several days for the conditions to come right for the voyage north to Southampton. On the early evening of 25 November, which was dry and bitterly cold, the fleet’s captains told them to board their ships to take advantage of the wind, which had started to blow in the right direction, and the tide, which was set to rise.
William of Ætheling’s bride, Matilda of Anjou, aged nine or ten, and perhaps considered too young to be exposed to a night of debauchery alongside her husband and his entourage, would travel with her father-in-law. She and the others sailing with the king on his ‘esnecca’ said goodbye to those travelling on the other ship, sure they would all see one another the following day after a night-time of sailing across the Channel.
Henry’s fellow passengers, who included ‘a body of noble knights of the king’s company’, embarked. Orderic Vitalis recorded that their launch took place ‘in the first watch of the night’, and William of Malmesbury agreed that this was ‘just before twilight’. They slipped out of Barfleur, the helmsman steering carefully to avoid the few, well-known, rocks just outside the harbour, the ship powered by its oarsmen until reaching the open seas, where the sails were dropped, ‘and the wind that filled his sails conducted him safely to his kingdom and extensive fortunes’.[1]
William Ætheling and his companions – who John of Worcester called ‘a large crowd of nobles, knights, young men, and women’[2] – were in no hurry to follow. Orderic Vitalis reported that the White Ship’s sailors, on learning the prince would be their passenger, ‘were delighted, and fawned on the king’s son, asking him for wine to drink’.[3] Stirred by the men’s flattery, William ordered an enormous quantity of wine to be brought aboard for them as well as for his travelling companions – this was the only cargo the White Ship was to carry, other than the king’s treasure and the passengers’ personal possessions.
Now that Henry had departed, William Ætheling and his fellow travellers set about fully enjoying themselves, with the prince’s wine fuelling the festivities. All were confident that they could give the king a generous head start and still reach Southampton before him. The crew were encouraged to join in the fun. The company downed three massive casks of wine, and Orderic reported that ‘too much drinking made them [all] drunk’. He noted with further disapproval how the marines serving on the ship were so inebriated that they forgot their station and began showing off mercilessly, occupying some of the seats reserved for passengers and ‘paying respect to almost no one’.[4]
This breakdown of order was ominous. The White Ship was embarking on a journey with her crew and key personnel intoxicated, while William Ætheling’s hangers-on were contemplating the speeds they would achieve in the voyage ahead. They had little time for the normal religious protocols on leaving a major port in such a fine vessel.
Given the general fear of the sea at this time, passengers liked to call on monks or priests to bless their vessel before setting off, in order to harness God’s protection. But when monks appeared with holy water to bless the White Ship the more high-spirited passengers chose to chase them away, shouting insults. This made the drunken spectators aboard howl with delight.
Roger, Bishop of Coutances, had travelled to Barfleur to bid farewell to one of his brothers, his ‘three distinguished nephews’ and his son William, who was one of the quartet of chaplains who paid the closest daily attendance to the king’s soul. Roger wished them a safe crossing and added a formal blessing of their passage but, Orderic Vitalis claimed, ‘they made light of it’.[5]
To the superstitious this rejection of religious blessing – whether offered by the monks or the bishop – left the ship and all travelling on her dangerously exposed to the vagaries of the sea. With the White Ship about to cast off and set sail a few passengers disembarked. Among them were: two monks from Tiron; Rabel, the son of Henry’s chamberlain, William de Tancarville; William de Roumare, the son of the lord of Bolingbroke; and Edward of Salisbury, who had fought with distinction during the previous year’s campaigns against the French.
Some would later say that they had been concerned by the raucousness of the inebriated crew, while Orderic Vitalis reported that, rather than feel confident that the crossing would go well, ‘they realised that there was too great a crowd of wild and headstrong young men on board’.[6]
Henry’s nephew, Stephen of Blois – whether from an illness that he had already contracted, or as a result of drinking too much that day – also got off the ship just before she sailed, ‘because he was suffering from diarrhoea’.[7] Two of Stephen’s knights – one of them Robert de Sauqueville, who was steward of his household – disembarked with him, in order to look after their master.
By the time William Ætheling and his companions and crew were ready to leave Barfleur, the evening chill had started to cool further, into a frost, and the new moon meant that it was dark. High tide on 25 November 1120 would have been at 10.43 p.m., making the water deep enough for the White Ship, with her two-metre draught, to sail from 8 p.m. Yet Thomas FitzStephen, being the master-steersman, would have waited till the tide slackened, to avoid his vessel being driven south on departing the harbour. The White Ship probably set sail a little before midnight.
As FitzStephen gave the order to cast off, he could be heard by the large body of onlookers to shout out his aim of overtaking the king before he reached Southampton. It was a refrain taken up by the passengers, many of them intoxicated after hours of drinking. The excitement of going to England in triumph, added to all the alcohol, made for a fevered atmosphere. Yells of wild encouragement to up the oars’ tempo rang out in the cold night air. ‘It was dark,’ wrote Wace, ‘and the light was not good; the sailors had been drinking and had not worked out the correct course. They had left the jetty and already spread the sail.’[8]
The fifty oarsmen bent their backs, falling into a quick rhythm. William of Malmesbury recorded how, after the White Ship’s departure: ‘She flies swifter than the winged arrow, sweeping the rippling surface of the deep.’[9] The problem was, the helmsman seems to have been as drunk as his crew. It appears likely that the alcohol clouded his senses, leading him to underestimate the considerable distance his ship had covered in a very short time, thanks to the oarsmen’s efforts and the premature dropping of the sail. How else to explain his negligence around the infamous rocks that all those steering ships into and out of Barfleur knew to avoid?
The White Ship was about one nautical mile out of the harbour, halfway between Barfleur and the Pointe de Barfleur, after which lay the open sea. In the darkness there came the shocking noise and impact of a mighty collision. The White Ship had run very hard into the Quillebœuf rock, a well-known local hazard, impaling her port side.
The impact splintered some of the rowers’ oars, and staved in two of the clinker-built ship’s planks. Water rushed through the deep gash. Sailors sprang onto the deck and, as those around them cried out in panic, they tried to push the White Ship clear of the Quillebœuf with boat hooks.
This attempt to extricate the vessel went on for some time, but without success. While struggling to prise the stricken ship free, some of the crew were washed away, the first casualties. Worse, the sailors’ efforts only succeeded in further opening up the wound in her side, allowing more water to pour in. The weight of this fresh influx crashed down upon more of the crew, who also drowned.
Wace recorded how the White Ship then ‘split completely and floundered; [and] the sea entered in several places’.[10] Impaled, askew, on her treacherous perch, and with the wind still filling her large mainsail, the White Ship teetered briefly before rolling hard, sideways.
As she tipped over, the passengers and the remainder of the crew began falling into the cold black water, screaming loudly. This was, most likely, the cry in the night that reached those still chatting in the port before heading off to sleep. They assumed that the party on the White Ship had merely reached new heights of drunkenness and abandon. Similarly, the cry could perhaps have made its way to Henry’s vessel. But neither group recognised the sound as a sign that tragedy had come calling.
The guards responsible for William Ætheling rushed to get him away to safety. They launched the White Ship’s only rowing boat, bundled him into it and pushed off in the direction of the shore, half a mile away. Their focus was the prince, and they left the rest of the ship’s passengers to the mercy of the sea.
Almost all of the nearly three hundred people on the White Ship died within minutes, the cold of the Channel in late November causing shock so intense that it quickly killed them. Orderic Vitalis wrote: ‘The passengers and crew raised cries of distress, but their mouths were soon stopped by the swelling waves, and all perished together.’[11] His narrative is written for dramatic effect, but it happens to be an accurate description of the effect on the human body of unexpectedly ending up plunged into extremely cold water.
The first reaction would have been what is known now as ‘cold water shock’. This is a gasp reflex, frequently accompanied by hyperventilation and muscle spasms. It is common for victims of cold water shock to inhale water while in this state, and to suffer dramatic changes in their pulse and blood pressure.
This lasts two or three minutes in water of fifteen degrees Celsius or less – and the Channel, on a late November night when we know there was frost in the air, would have been touching zero. Many would have drowned or died of shock by the end of this very short time frame. Advice to someone in this perilous situation today would be to focus on their breathing, and to try to control it by consciously slowing down the rate of inhalation and exhalation. The last thing to do is panic. But the occupants of the White Ship, partying uproariously one moment, cascading into the sea the next, with very few (if any) able to swim, must surely have panicked.
Many might have clung to the nearest person to them, desperately hoping this would keep them afloat, but in the process guaranteeing the death of themselves and the one they had latched themselves on to. According to Berold the butcher, Richard of Lincoln was hugged tight in the waves by Otuel FitzEarl, his former tutor. This has been presented as a romantic, chivalric, act by chroniclers of the shipwreck, interpreting Otuel’s action as a wish to die with one he held so dear. But it is more likely that Otuel was reacting in panic to his imminent drowning, and that he hastened the death of his former pupil by taking him down with him, while seized by a state of terror.
Those who somehow managed to stay alive beyond this initial period would, after anything between three to thirty minutes of immersion, have lost sensation and strength in their hands and feet. Even those who knew how to swim would no longer have the ability to do so. Hypothermia would have claimed those who did not drown.
There were very few survivors after that point. When the ship capsized, Berold struggled through the water. He came across a piece of broken masthead and scrambled onto it, his rough animal-skin pelisse retaining some heat even in the cold of a November night: wool, even when wet, preserves its ability to insulate. There was no better material to wear, if seeking warmth in cold water.
By getting onto the fragment of wood, Berold was able to stave off hypothermia: staying in the Channel would soon have drawn his body temperature down to that of the water itself. Berold was drenched, but conscious, and he was just warm enough to counter the shock of the extreme cold. He could now concentrate on survival.
Berold was joined on the spar by Geoffrey de L’Aigle, one of the pair of brothers who had been anticipating the return to England that promised to deliver up to them their rightful inheritance in Pevensey. Geoffrey was renowned to be one of Henry’s braver soldiers, and he needed all his reserves of courage now.
Soon after the pair had found their place of safety, they saw the head of Thomas FitzStephen bobbing above the waves, heading towards them. ‘The king’s son!’ he shouted. ‘What has become of him?’
Berold told the captain what he had seen: William Ætheling had been bundled into the White Ship’s solitary rowing boat by his bodyguard. This small boat had been making its way towards the shore, and safety, when the prince ordered the oarsmen to stop. He had heard his half-sister, Matilda of Perche, screaming for him to come to save her from death. William of Malmesbury claimed she was ‘shrieking out that he should not abandon her so barbarously’.[12] Given the weight of her dress, if this episode did happen, it must have been while she was still aboard the wreck of the White Ship, for once in the water she would have been taken below the waves very quickly.
William Ætheling had, Berold reported to FitzStephen, ordered his men to turn back so they could rescue her but, as they made their way through water frothing with the thrashing of survivors desperate for life, many of those drowning tried to clamber aboard the small craft, and it was swamped. It had given way under the weight of so many figures trying to heave themselves out of the bitingly cold water, and it had gone down. The prince had perished along with all the others, Berold told the captain, including the sister he had been unable to save.
FitzStephen’s worst fears had been confirmed. Realising that, if he lived, he would be held responsible for recklessly causing the death of the heir to the throne, he accepted the hopelessness of his situation: ‘It is vain for me to go on living,’ he said.[13] These were his last recorded words. Rather than face a furious and distraught king, seeking answers as to how the man he had entrusted with his son’s life had so fatally let him down, FitzStephen allowed himself to slip below the waves to his death.
The butcher and the aristocratic warrior were the sole survivors of the White Ship now. They held on to the spar together through much of the dark, frosty night, trying to shore up one another’s morale. They prayed, and they submitted to God’s will.
Shivering in his fine clothes, Geoffrey de L’Aigle managed to stay alive for several hours. He seems to have suffered from hypothermia, remaining conscious but withdrawn. If so, he would have started to speak with a slur, then would have become increasingly tired and weak, before the cold finally claimed him. His last words were a blessing on Berold, after which he fell unconscious. He slid into the sea, never to be seen again.
‘Beroul [sic] alone escaped,’ wrote Wace. ‘He grabbed hold of a piece of wood and clung on to it, holding on firmly until he reached the shore when people came who lifted him out.’ These ‘people’ were three fishermen, going about their business early the following morning. They spotted the butcher who, although frozen and exhausted, was soon able to talk. ‘He revealed and explained how the king’s son [died] and how the ship had broken up.’[14]
It quickly became clear to the people along that stretch of coastline that the butcher – perhaps the poorest of all aboard; John of Worcester dismissed him as a ‘villein … not worthy of being named’[15] – was the sole survivor of the passengers and crew who had set off on the White Ship in such high spirits the previous night. He was a unique eyewitness to the terrible loss, and one who it seems Orderic spoke to and got to know: ‘When he was somewhat revived,’ the monk recalled, ‘he told the whole sad tale to those who wished to learn, and subsequently lived for about twenty years in good health.’[16] How great the temptation was to exaggerate any of his tale, it is hard to know from this distance.
Local seafarers got to the wreck of the White Ship, which was lying broken on the rock, and entered the timber carcass. They found Henry’s treasure intact and safely ferried it ashore. The passengers’ personal possessions were also largely still there. All that was missing were the people who had set off in such high spirits on the fateful night. Not one corpse was found on the ship.
The people of Barfleur and surrounding ports scoured the shores for others who might have made it to land, but they found only bodies washed up on the beaches and swirling among the rocks. These had for the most part been carried a long way from the wreck site by the tide and were discovered several days after the Quillebœuf had been struck.
Among them was Richard of Lincoln, who had been in the water long enough to lose his features, whether these had been eaten, had rotted, or had been lacerated by the rocks. He was identified not by his face, but by the distinctiveness of his fine clothes. It was possible to lay him to rest.
Churchmen at the time were suspicious of the morality of those who indulged in showy rather than conservative dress, and who flouted convention in other ways. Preoccupation with a flamboyant wardrobe was seen as the signal of a deeper moral malaise, closely aligned to sexual perversion. ‘All of them, or nearly all, were said to be tainted with sodomy,’ wrote Henry of Huntingdon of those who drowned that night. ‘And they were snared and caught. Behold the glittering vengeance of God! They perished and almost all of them had no burial. And so, death suddenly devoured those who had deserved it, although the sea was calm and there was no wind.’[17]
Most of the dead were never found. William Ætheling was one of the many who simply disappeared. The designated ruler of England and Normandy, the apple of his father’s eye, vanished in the dark of the night-time sea, never to be seen again: ‘The head which should have worn a crown of gold,’ Henry of Huntingdon wrote, ‘was suddenly dashed against the rocks; instead of wearing embroidered robes, he floated naked in the waves; and instead of ascending a lofty throne, he found his grave in the bellies of fishes at the bottom of the sea.’[18]
