The White Ship by Charles Spencer

Author:Charles Spencer [Spencer, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-08-25T17:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

Reaction to Tragedy

Sinners in their guilty blindness cannot see or understand the things which the heavenly king rightly ordains for his creation, until sinful man is captured like a fish on a hook or a bird in a net and entangled in sufferings beyond hope of escape.

Orderic Vitalis

Henry reached Southampton safely on the morning after he had set out from Barfleur. On disembarking the king moved twenty miles inland to a favourite royal hunting lodge at Clarendon, in the New Forest. He was keen to get away from the bustle of a port where many other vessels were disgorging passengers recently arrived from Normandy. There he awaited the arrival of the passengers of the White Ship.

Back in Southampton it gradually became clear that the White Ship was the one vessel out of all those that had recently set off for England that was unaccounted for. In the absence of a storm, which might have hindered her or blown her off course, or of a sighting by any of the many ships that had crossed that night and the following day, the fear slowly grew that the White Ship might have sunk. News that she had indeed done so came across the Channel, brought by people shaken by the enormity of what they had to report.

With confirmation of the tragedy, nobody wanted to tell the king what had happened. He was daunting when happy, but terrifying when upset, and all who had direct dealings with him knew how very close he was to his children – especially to William Ætheling, his cherished heir.

At court many were grief-stricken at losses among their own families, friends, colleagues and comrades-in-arms: ‘O God,’ recorded Wace, ‘what a catastrophe and what sorrow there was!’[1] Orderic Vitalis wrote of the ‘deep mourning and countless tears’ shed for the ‘terrible disaster’.[2] But those in attendance at Clarendon kept their heartache hidden from the king, knowing he would ask its cause and learn of the tragedy that had hit him more forcefully than any other.

A day after settling into the lodge Henry began wondering aloud when he would be reunited with his son. His vague concern soon changed to escalating anxiety. It was clear that the truth would have to be laid out to him in all its ghastliness: somebody had to tell the king what had happened.

It fell to Theobald of Blois-Chartres, one of Henry’s nephews, to transmit the awful news. Theobald was already mourning the loss of two siblings in the shipwreck: he believed his sister, Lucia-Mahaut, and his brother, Stephen of Blois, were among the dead. (He was yet to learn that Stephen had left the White Ship through sickness.)

Weighed down by his own heartache, and eager to avoid the wrath and woe he feared would erupt in his formidable uncle, Theobald persuaded a boy to pass on the horrifying report. The child was old enough to understand the misery he was charged with passing on. He came to the king in tears and threw himself down at Henry’s feet, blurting out in a torrent what had happened off Barfleur.

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