How the medieval Titanic plunged England into anarchy
The White Ship Charles Spencer William Collins £25
The sinking of the White Ship, nine centuries ago in 1120, is often called ‘the medieval Titanic’. And superficially these two shipping tragedies had much in common. A stateof-the-art vessel set out on a much publicised voyage and, thanks to some degree of naval incompetence, hit a static object in the water and sank. Life-saving attempts were bungled. Many people died. The terrors of the poor souls who drowned in freezing waters were later reported far and wide, the pathos layered on thick.
Yet whereas the sinking of Titanic in 1912 was essentially a commercial disaster, the sinking of the White Ship was a political catastrophe. It changed European history. In England, the loss of life led to a civil war than lasted nearly 20 years. In dynastic terms it ended the rule of the Norman kings descended from William the Conqueror and ushered in the Plantagenet era of Henry II and Richard the Lionheart. So although the Titanic got the movie treatment with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, the White Ship is really the bigger story.
Charles Spencer understands all this. His new account of the White Ship is rooted in the medieval chronicles, but crafted like a Hollywood thriller. Spencer is one of the finest narrative historians around – previous books about the battle of Blenheim and the killers of Charles I both ripped along with pace and verve. But he also knows his stuff. It is never easy to make sense of the murky world of the 12th Century, still less to flesh out its characters. But this story fairly rattles towards its terrible denouement.
What happened aboard the White Ship was this: in November 1120, Henry I, King of England, and his teenage son and heir, William ‘the Aetheling’, were sailing from Barfleur in Normandy to the south coast of England. They were in celebratory mood, having concluded tortuously long political negotiations with Louis VI of France, nicknamed ‘Louis the Fat’. Henry’s ship set off first. But William had borrowed a high-powered vessel – the White Ship – and meant to show it off and have a party. Much wine was taken, by the crew as well as the passengers, who included a number of William’s illegitimate half-siblings and a slew of young aristocrats. Priests who came to bless the boat were sent away with drunken jeers.
Late at night the White Ship left port. But under half- cut command, within minutes it hit a large rock at the mouth of the harbour and started taking on water – fast. In the scramble for lifeboats, William drowned, along with every other passenger but one: a butcher called Berold, who survived to tell the awful tale.
When Henry heard the news, he was inconsolable. And rightly so. Although he reigned until 1135, he never produced another legitimate heir, and was forced instead to leave England to his daughter, Matilda. His barons rejected her queenship, so she dug in for a war for the throne against her cousin Stephen. This was settled only in 1154. It is known today as the Anarchy – but some contemporaries called it ‘the Shipwreck’. That feels more apt – and Spencer’s lively, meticulous new book shows us why.