Henry I & The White Ship
England's worst maritime disaster took place 900 years ago. By Charles Spencer.
It is precisely nine centuries since the worst maritime disaster – which doubles as one of the greatest royal catastrophes – in English history. The 900th anniversary of the sinking of the White Ship fell on 25 November this year. The greatest twelfth century English historian, William of Malmesbury, wrote: ‘No Ship that ever sailed brought England such Disaster,’ and that assessment of the scale of the tragedy, remarkably, stands to this day.
It was the passenger list of the White Ship that made its loss so uniquely awful. Apart from Henry I’s only legitimate son, William Ætheling, it included two of the king’s natural children, the cream of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy (including eighteen ladies with the rank of countess or above), several of the great generals who had finally brought England complete victory over France, as well as the bureaucrats who controlled Henry’s strict, effective, royal governance.
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