The White Ship Disaster

Send us Fan Mail A royal party boat packed with nobles, wine, and bad decisions sets off from Barfleur and hits rock within minutes, and England never really recovers the same way. We’re telling the story of the White Ship disaster of 1120, the night William Adelin, the only legitimate son of King Henry I, drowns in the Channel and takes a generation of Anglo-Norman leadership down with him. We start with the brittle logic of medieval succession: William the Conqueror’s cross-Channel empire,...