The royal party was crossing to England after four years in Normandy. Henry sailed ahead, but William and many young nobles followed on the White Ship, where the passengers and crew had been drinking heavily. Leaving harbour at night, it hit a rock and sank. Of about 300 aboard, only a butcher from Rouen survived. Henry's heir was dead, and the struggle over the succession after his death in 1135 plunged England into the civil war known as the Anarchy.
Henry I, the youngest son of William the Conqueror, had spent years securing his rule in both England and Normandy. His son William, 17, had just done homage to the King of France for the duchy, and the family was returning in triumph. A sailor named Thomas FitzStephen offered Henry his new ship, the White Ship. Henry had already arranged his passage and suggested his son take it instead.
The young passengers ordered wine for the crew, and when priests arrived to bless the ship, they were sent away amid laughter. The ship set off after dark, with the crew rowing hard to overtake the king's ship, and struck a rock at the harbour's mouth. According to the chronicler Orderic Vitalis, William was put into a small boat and could have escaped, but turned back when he heard his half-sister cry out, and the boat was swamped.
No one dared tell Henry for a day; a boy finally broke the news, and the king is said to have collapsed. He made his barons swear to accept his daughter Matilda as heir, but after his death his nephew Stephen seized the throne, and civil war followed for almost 20 years.
Key people: William Adelin, Henry I of England, Empress Matilda