Dan Snow's History Hit - The White Ship

Episode Date: September 5, 2020

Charles Spencer joined me on the pod to discuss the sinking of the White Ship on the 25th November 1120. It is one of the greatest disasters that England has ever suffered. Its repercussions changed English and European history for ever.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. I'm just sitting in my car overlooking the icy cold channel, the English channel. I'm thinking about the decision I made to invite the entire History Hit team down for the summer party, quote-unquote summer party, on my boat, on said channel. I'm looking for brightness in the western horizon. To be honest, I'm not seeing much. I'm not seeing much. But in Britain we have a little tradition when the weather is bad and we're going seafaring. We just go seafaring and then we go to the pub. Now, that tradition, this is a bit of a segue, that tradition is despite the worst maritime disaster in British history. That is according to the latest history on the White Ship disaster. 900

years ago in 1120, the only legitimate son of Henry I, William the Etheling, William Etheling, he set sail from Normandy for the relatively straightforward journey with a southerly wind across the Channel to the Solent, where I am now. He never made it. They smashed into the rocks less than a mile out of harbour in the middle of the night on a freezing cold night. Nearly every single person on that boat died. Only one person told the tale. It was the White Ship Disaster. Never before or after was so much of the ruling political and military elite of the kingdom of england wiped out in one accident and that event has got a new book out about it from charles spencer charles spencer's been on the podcast before he's talked about the escape of uh king charles the

second he's written many other books he's uh descended of course from duke of marlborough and for one of the victor in the Battle of Blenheim and other battles. He's given his full title. He's the ninth Earl Spencer. He's the younger brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, therefore uncle of Princes William and Harry and all that kind of stuff. But more importantly to all the history hit fans, he's a brilliant historian and a brilliant writer.

And his new book, On the White Ship, is fab. And I'm glad he's come on the podcast to talk about it. If you want to go and watch documentaries about medieval history or listen to lots of podcasts about it in the back catalogue, please go to HistoryHitTV. You just go to HistoryHit.tv, use the code POD1, P-O-D-1, and you get a month for free. And then you get the first month for just one pound, euro or dollar.

Go and do it. Go and listen to Charles Spencer's previous forays onto the podcast, as well as many other people. So please go and check that out. In the meantime, enjoy the Earl Spencer talking about the white ship. Charles, thank you very much for coming back on the podcast. What fun. Thank you very much for having me. You point out Henry I deserves, he's one of the more remarkable kings of English history. He deserves far more, well, I don't know if credit's the right word, but far more recognition than most of us give him.

Absolutely. You know, his reign was a very, very key part of English history from 1100 for 35 years. And we live with the consequences of his reign. He set up very strong financial systems, and we still have his exchequer in place today. He got a grip, really, on the overmighty aristocrats in England and Normandy. He asserted royal power. He was a very effective, I say by our standards, probably quite ruthless and cruel,

but by the standards of the day, necessarily powerful, effective king, one of the greats, I think. There is a sort of central problem, isn't there, in this period, and it runs through your book, which is of succession, and particularly succession in a trans-maritime state. We've got England and Normandy. They were fighters, weren't they? What I learned writing this book,

really, was that when somebody died, first of all, they went from a very elevated strength and position to total irrelevance, people fighting over the jewels on William the Conqueror's corpse while he was still warm. And then William Rufus, you know, shot in the New Forest and left to be lumbered back in the back of a cart to Winchester for burial. And every man was for himself. There was this very terrifying period for most people who were in the know between one king becoming dead and the next one being crowned. There was no law then. You couldn't be prosecuted. If you did something terrible, you hadn't broken any king's law.

then. You couldn't be prosecuted. If you did something terrible, you hadn't broken any king's law. So the essential thing for the powerful people in England and Normandy was to fill the vacancy as quickly as possible. And both the key times during this period, Henry I seized the kingdom of England. He really had no expectation of it. He was the fourth son. But he was on site. He rushed from his brother's corpse, William Rufus's corpse, to Winchester and on to London to become crowned. And everyone was quite glad to have a king very quickly. It was only once they had him that they thought, hang on, his eldest brother, Robert, should have been king. Everyone knew that. He just distinguished himself hugely on the First Crusade and was heading back to claim... Well, he didn't know he had a throne, but he would have claimed the throne as soon as he learnt of William Rufus's death. And the same happened with Henry I's death. I mean, the central tenet of his life

after the White Ship disaster was getting people in England and Normandy to recognise his daughter Matilda as his successor. But as soon as he died, his nephew, Stephen, rushed across the channel and scooped up the English throne for himself. So it really was a matter of there were various claimants, there was no primogeniture really. It was sort of every man for himself and the first one there got it yeah the look at the royal treasury the location is just fascinatingly important um let so so the so as you say william the conqueror dies he's already

at odds with his sons when he dies which seems to be a norman and plantagenet well and to be fair stewart and hanoverian and who knows possibly even house of sa Saxe-Coburg and Windsor and everything problem. We won't go into that. It seems to be a problem with monarchy and primogeniture for some reason. Anyway, so William the Congregant dies. He's fighting his son. He's fighting the King of France. And he's got these – one boy's already been killed in the New Forest.

He's got these three sons. And, I mean, Henry is way out of it. I mean, he's irrelevant, this guy. I mean, you paint a sad picture of him as almost, well, he's imprisoned, he's penniless, he's nothing. He is an absolute spare part in terms of succession. As I've touched on, he is the fourth son. Nobody's really thought about him doing anything.

There's a very big hint that he was probably destined for the church as the youngest and most irrelevant son. And then his two surviving brothers, when William the Conqueror dies, they use him when it's convenient. He gets no land. William the Conqueror leaves him money, but no land, no title, and he's basically told to get on with it. Now, that leaves him at the mercy of his two much more powerful brothers, Robert, who controls Normandy, and then William Roof is controlling England, who are at each other's necks most of the time anyway. And they use him as an ally when it suits them.

But yes, they imprison him. Yes, they take his money off him. He has a miserable time. This man who becomes a sort of titan of the 12th century spends his youth as a wandering knight, really. He does spend quite a lot of time in the company of the ladies, doesn't he? Even during that time. He loves a lady.

He is our most fecund monarch, I believe. We know of 24 children, two of them were legitimate, William and Matilda. And then we know of 22 others who he readily acknowledged. And children, just moved on. But Henry looked after them, promoted them, used them for his own benefit very much. He arranged marriages around Europe to suit his interests and to further his power and to establish himself. And it was always the way with history, as you know better than anyone. You look back and you realise Henry I had a solid reign of 35 years. But early on, he could easily have been dispossessed. And he needed to build up alliances across Europe to make sure that he could stay in power. And we are all, all descended, surely, from Henry I.

I'd say that I was trying to work it out, but there must be millions of people descended from him. I mean, 24 children. Imagine they all had three children who survived in childhood. And then you cascade down the generations. I mean, yes, I think we all carry a little bit of Henry I in us. Yeah. And I think Adam Rutherford, who's been on this podcast, the geneticist, would, I'm sure, and then he so i guess let's come to this this key moment i'm sitting in the new forest talking to you now just a couple of miles from my house he was hunting with his older brother william rufus who by the way i didn't realize i mean he did not get a good press he was awful he would just go around his his followers raping

pillaging his own country even during some quote-unquote peacetime. I mean, just a brutal king. Yes. I think what attracted... William the Conqueror liked him the best of his sons, and I think it was because he was a very competent soldier. But my goodness, he was rough. And he encouraged appalling behaviour. His court going around England

was similar to the people who had to suffer their presence as an invading army. There was no rule. People just helped themselves to people's daughters, property, whatever they wanted. And there was no comeback, really. And at the same time, where he gets a really bad press, of course, is that most of the historians from this period, I mean, they're all churchmen of some kind, he had a total disregard for the church's authority. And he used to keep Bishop Ricks and Archbishop Ricks vacant so that he could enjoy the income.

And he only ever sort of came good whenever he was particularly ill and he thought he was going to meet his maker. And occasionally he was brought into line to, you know, do the right thing for the church but that he will always get a bad press because the church wrote the press true of course a very important point to remember so he's hunting in the new forest very near me a big piece of royal forest which william the conqueror established throwing off locals and for one of his sons already been killed there and on tell me what happened on that day well

gosh it was a dangerous sport i mean not only you're quite right not only had one of william the conqueror's sons died already from hunting but um william rufus's uh so sorry no robert kurtos is the oldest brother his his one of his sons had died earlier that year so on the morning of that August morning in 1100, William Rufus has had a terrible night of nightmares. And he's had visions of his blood being taken out of his body through steam. And he's a bit shaken up. And he gets a message from a bishop saying his churchmen have had visions too. And he's got to mend his ways. And he doesn't. And he decides to put a very brave face on it.

And he goes out with his hunting party, including his brother Henry. And nobody knows who fired the fatal arrow. It's meant to be a man called Tyrrell, but he always denied it, even on his deathbed, when people tended to be quite honest because they were facing a fairly stern judge in the great beyond. And it's interesting to me that no one ever said that Henry did it. Henry killed his brother because he is the one who would benefit the most from it. And I think what happened was it probably was an accident, we don't know,

but the arrow went straight in and killed William Rufus pretty much outright. And what finished him off was he staggered to his knees and then fell forward and drove the arrow through himself. And of course, to the sort of superstitious Christian mind, this was a very telling way for him to go because he had behaved so badly towards the church, etc. There was no chance of him having absolution at the end. And Henry sees his brother dead and rides hell for leather to Winchester to seize the treasury. Leaving the courts.

Leaves his brother's courts, which I find deeply odd, but there we are. And then he gets to Winchester, where the treasury is, and is trying to get into it when one of the old knights stands in his way and says, no, we promise to swear allegiance to your brother. and is trying to get into it when one of the old knights stands in his way and says, no, we promise to swear allegiance to your brother. And Henry pushes him aside, claims the treasury, and then rides to London and is very quickly crowned there.

There's no time for the Archbishop of Canterbury. He grabs a bishop who crowns him. And it's so interesting, Dan, when I look at this, I mean, this period is new to me. In the medieval mind, once somebody had undergone coronation, they became divinely blessed. So once you were king, it was really a difficult thing to take you off the throne without incurring God's wrath. That's how they viewed it. So it wasn't just a ceremony. It was a rubber stamp, a divine rubber stamping that you were God's representative on earth. And then he had a very tough time because people were very quick to support him

when there was a possibility of chaos without a king on the throne. But then people thought, well, hang on. People had a very low opinion of Henry I from his childhood. A lot of the higher aristocracy and his royal cousins saw him as a bit of an oaf. He was seen to be too obsessed with hunting, and he would ride out into New Forest with his own pack of hounds and his own horn. And it was seen as a bit in for a dig that he became a sort of hunt servant rather than being one of the leading figures of the royal court.

And very quickly, Henry showed his skill, I think, as a diplomat by coaxing the exiled archbishop into his hands and said, look, please, I recognise you. I want you to come back. He'd been exiled by William Rufus. And he said, come back. I'd been exiled by William Rufus. And he said, come back, I'll recognise you if you recognise me. And Anselm crucially said that people had to support Henry and that gave him breathing space to form his own foothold of a dynasty. Land a Viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're

preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History H Hit. There are new episodes every week. And there's a few sieges and things that go on. And he also imprisons his brother. And you're rather sweet about his brother, Robert, who's a bit of a Muppet, despite good performance in the First Crusade. That was the highlight of his life.

He gets imprisoned by his younger brother, Henry, and ends up, but rather comfortably, rather enjoys, I think, just throwing off the ambition of the oldest son. And I mean, how long is he in prison for? Oh, he's in prison for decades, for about 40 years, I think. And what happens with Robert Curto's is he was an appalling ruler of Normandy, and he would have been a catastrophe for England

on the basis of how badly he did in Normandy. And you're right, the only thing he did well was fight in the Crusades very bravely. But he had no idea how to rule and I think you're absolutely correct. I think he found you know very comfortable time in jail was absolutely fine and we find him towards the end of his life writing poetry. He's moved to a castle in Wales and he writes about an oak tree and I think he was probably very relieved to be taken away from the front line of brutal medieval ruling. I tell you, I'd be relieved. Reading your book, I mean, I was so struck by the just insane. I mean, it just, the various lords of Porteux and Anjou and various Maine, just, I mean, it was like a bag of eels.

I mean, how did you even begin? How did this sort of imposing peace was just a yearly, an annual project to start again at the beginning? I don't know how they survived, half of them. And of course, half of them didn't. I think one of the problems they had was the role of Christianity in all of this. So a lot of the, particularly in England, there was a sort of fight between doing right by the church and doing right as a king.

I think that the only way to survive in these times was to have very rigid rules, which you stuck to. And the most appalling episode in my book, in the whole tale of Henry I, is the way he treated the basic laws of hostage taking. He brokered a peace between one of his illegitimate daughters and her husband and some neighbours by making them swap each other's children as hostages. And Henry's daughter lost patience with the boy hostage she was holding and had him blinded. And the father of the boy went as understandably outraged to Henry and demanded his rights. And so Henry agreed that his two granddaughters, his daughters daughters, would be blinded as well and have their noses cut off as the the sort of wrongful part of a hostage

situation that had gone terribly awry. And I'm afraid that's the one bit where I just can't get my head around this time. You know, isn't there some way? I mean, here we are. I mean, you'd do anything to observe that the rules have been broken, but to preserve your granddaughters. It's just an astonishing. But to me, it says, these were the rules, and Henry I stuck by them. Well, his daughter took matters into her own hands. Tell everyone what she did.

Well, yes, she pretended she wanted an audience with her father and then whipped out a crossbow and tried to shoot Henry I. But she missed him. And then she was besieged by her father and then jumped into the moat of the castle in Evry, where she was. And the observers were most shocked that this woman's actually fleeing for her life. And I don't think that dignity was the first thing in her mind. But she showed her legs when her dress was sort of whipped up from her as she descended very fast into the moat. People were appalled that they could see the lady's legs.

Different standards. I mean, trying to find a common standard was difficult. So he's got these two legitimate children. The heir is everything. He's got the son, William, named after his father. He's got his daughter, Matilda. Don't tell everyone what happens on a cold night, just as he beats the French kings,

and just as he establishes absolute certain dominion over his French lands, they go back to Barfleur, and then what happens? Barfleur is the common stop-off point for voyages to Southampton, and on a normal day, with a good wind, it would take 10 or 12 hours. So Henry arrives in the port of Barfleur and a man comes forward who declares himself to be the son of the captain of William the Conqueror's flagship in the invasion of 1066. And he says to the king, I have this ship, the white ship, and it would be my honour to take you back to England in triumph. You know, you've defeated the French king, you have power now, and your son is recognised as your heir. And Henry is always very organised. He says, no, no,

I'm fine, I've made my arrangements, but it sounds fun. Your ship looks marvellous, and yes, I'll put my son William in your ship, and various others. And so onto that ship gets the flower of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy, including the only male heir to the throne, a couple of Henry's other illegitimate children, nieces, nephews, bureaucrats, generals, and 18 women of rank of countess or above. So it's got a lot of very important people, 250 passengers of the highest note. And they decide to get stuck in to an awful lot of wine in Barfleur Harbour. The prince is very flattered because the crew are overawed at the honour of having him there. So he shares the wine with them.

They all get rip-roaringly drunk too. And then some point towards midnight on the 25th of November, exactly 900 years ago, they set off in the night. And the cry goes up that they must race to England and try and beat Henry I there, even though his ships had a several-hour head start. And so the 50 oarsmen bend their backs. The helmsman gets a bit overexcited and

I think miscalculates very badly because he drops the sail too soon, which adds to the speed. There are a few very obvious rocks outside Barfleur. One of them is called the Keyberth Rock and the white ship goes at great speed into this rock. The drunken sailors scramble around with their staffs and pikes and try and push the white ship off, which only succeeds. These are clinker-based ships, so they're lip over lip of timber. It breaks open the timber. And the passengers start to cascade into a very, very cold sea. just start to cascade into a very, very cold sea. And the one survivor of this shipwreck is a man called Beru, he's a butcher from Rouen, who has, well, he's basically followed these rich people onto the ship to try and get his debts paid. And he watches this sort of ghastliness unfold.

And at one point, he's lying there with one knight who at that point is alive. And the ship's captain swims towards them on their broken mast and says, look, where's the prince? And the butcher tells him, he said, I saw the prince. He was bundled into the only rowing boat and was going to go to safety with his bodyguard. And then he heard his sister, the Countess of Perch, call for him and furious that he wasn't coming to help. So he ordered the little boat to turn around. And at that point, all these people who were thrashing around in the water for their lives, grabbed hold of the side of the lifeboat, and they all went down, including the prince.

And this is so appalling, this news, that the captain of the white ship decides to let himself die, just goes under the water and is never seen again. And then the butcher's rescued by some fishermen, first light the next day. And then the terrible thing is, who's going to tell Henry? You know, Henry's a very tough and unhappy man most of the time, but who's going to tell him that three of his children and all of his greatest men and women have died? I mean, it's brutal. And I never, I mean, I heard the story of the white ship,

but I never realised it was on a flat, calm night about a mile offshore. This is the thing. So people heard it on shore, but because everyone on the ship was so drunk and noisy, when they screamed for their lives, people just heard it and thought, oh, the party's reached a new crescendo. They didn't realise that there was something really serious going on. In fact, they say, people said that they could hear the screams across the water for many a mile, actually in the ship that Henry was on. But whether that's,'s you know wanting to be part of the tragedy I don't know amazing so Henry

lives his only son uh he attempts to get Matilda on the throne reminds me of Maria Theresa in the 18th century um and but I mean he must have been devastated because he takes it within within weeks he's married some young woman desperate to try and sire more sons it's so interesting because I don't know what happened here. I mean, it was definitely from his side that there was no children because his second wife, who was this great beauty, Adeliza of Louvain, she went on to have seven children with her second husband.

So there was no reproduction problems there, although the bishops tried to convince her that she had a problem with her womb. She did not. And I don't know whether by this stage, you know, Henry was in his 50s, which was old then, and whether he was impotent or sterile or depressed and couldn't, you know, whatever it was, I have no idea. But the upshot was that she travelled with him, this young, beautiful bride, was by his side the whole time because he was desperate to have another male heir. Nothing happened. And after about seven years,

he realised that things were looking very desperate. So he had his leading aristocrats and churchmen swear allegiance to his daughter Matilda's succession, which they all seemed to do quite happily, whether in Normandy or in Northampton, down the road from here. They swore allegiance, but it meant nothing. To be honest, I think that the prejudice against a female ruler was based in practicality, in that a lot of the ruler's business at this time was leading people into battle. But of course there was this sort of fundamental prejudice

against what women were capable of doing and not capable of doing. And Matilda had proved herself to be very useful as she had been married to the Holy Roman Emperor, as he would be known now, and had done a very effective job sitting you know, sitting in for him occasionally, but she wasn't given a chance in England. And it's odd because it's so clear that there were so many impressive women about. Henry's first wife was very impressive.

Henry's sister... Oh, you picked out two fantastic people there. They're really impressive, yes. And in fact, Adela of Blois, who was his youngest sister, Henry's youngest sister, so the conqueror's youngest daughter, is an incredibly accomplished woman and really respected and known throughout Europe that she basically kept the show going in Blois

because her husband was useless. And in fact, it's one of her sons, Stephen, who seizes the throne. And she becomes quite an, even though she retires to a nunnery, she's an important factor in pushing her children forward. Yeah, well, they would have been a lot better off. And then, of course, Henry II marries, is both the son of Matilda and he marries a remarkable woman as well. All available on other History Hit podcasts. Anyway, Charles, tell us what this book is called. It's called The White Ship.

And yes, it's very much, it came out of a, I had to give a talk in Leeds Castle about the Queens of England. And I thought I'd throw in the unknown, the nearly queen, Matilda. And people were much more interested in that than they were in Bodecia or Lady Jane Grey. And then I spotted this 900th anniversary. And look, I do believe, you know, I'm taking Titanic into account.

I believe the White Ship disaster remains the greatest maritime tragedy this country's ever suffered. Amazing. Powerful stuff. Let's leave it there. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Hi everyone, it's me, Dan Snow. Just a quick request.

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