The harbour at Barfleur in Normandy today. William the Conqueror’s ship Mona was built here, and William Adelin set out from this port in the White Ship.
IN 1120, when William Adelin* was sixteen, his father King Henry I took him across the Channel to be married to Matilda of Anjou, daughter of a powerful rival in northern France.
After the wedding, Henry went on ahead, leaving his son to sail home in the White Ship, the newest and fastest vessel in the royal fleet. When they finally sailed, night was closing in and the crew were in high spirits. They thought it would be fun to overtake the King, but the helmsman steered into a rock in the dark. The ship sank almost immediately. Of three hundred passengers, only one made it ashore. William himself swam back to rescue his young half-sister, Matilda FitzRoy, and was drowned with her.
Henry was heartbroken, and after he died in 1135 England was plunged into a succession crisis which was not resolved until his daughter’s son Henry II inherited the crown in 1154.
‘Adelin’ is a later version of the Anglo-Saxon word Ætheling, meaning ‘prince’.
Précis
After his marriage to Matilda of Anjou in Normandy, the young Prince William set off back to England in the brand new White Ship. Tragically, the over-excited crew steered the ship onto the rocks. William died trying to rescue his half-sister, and only one other passenger survived to tell the tale. (51 / 60 words)
