The Miraculous Crossing
TODAY IN NAVAL HISTORY
27-28 SEPTEMBER 1066
THE MIRACULOUS CROSSING
For the first week of January in the year 1066, King Edward the Confessor of England agonized on his death bed. A sudden apoplexy (cerebral hemorrhage) caused lapses in and out of delirium until January 5th. Then in a flash of lucidity just moments before his death, the childless Edward named his trusted advisor Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex, as his successor–despite the same promise years before to Edward’s cousin, William II, Duke of Normandy. (Normandy was a small principality in what is now northern France.) Harold quickly arranged his coronation, before word of Edward’s illness reached his cousin. The Duke took the news of Harold’s ascension poorly and reacted in keeping with the Norman history of near continuous warfare for centuries–he planned a cross-channel invasion to reclaim his crown.
William’s plan was ambitious, as he was a decidedly land-centric sovereign with no maritime experience and no navy. Purpose-built warships were unseen in 11th century northern Europe. Navies of the day served only to transport land armies when the need arose. William’s army was substantial: with pike, sword, and axe-wielding infantry; archers, several thousand chivalric warriors, and their horses. Channel ships of the day were of classic Norse lines; open, double-ended boats with high stem and stern posts, powered by oars and a single square sail. Sloop-rigging had not yet reached northern Europe. Channel ships could not sail into the wind, which blew predominantly out of the northeast. In fact English coast watchers relaxed during a north wind–knowing an attack from the Continent would be impossible.
By September, William had cobbled together a navy with the help of regional barons and Flemish pilots of dubious loyalty. Perhaps due to his naivety, William pushed his invasion despite the lateness of the season. Through September they waited on the Norman coast for a favorable wind. Sustained southerly winds at this time of the year in the English Channel are a rarity, and an attempted launch on 12 September failed when the wind swung around and stiffened. But when the standards shifted again on the evening of the 26th, William embarked boldly. By dawn he was at sea aboard his flagship Mora with 350 open boats astern. Men, armor, weapons, and horses weighed the boats to nearly swamping, but the wind held. On the evening of the 28th the flotilla made landfall at Pevensey, west of Dover. Miraculously, only two ships were lost in the 200-mile voyage–an astonishing feat of will and shear luck! They marched to the nearby village of Hastings, where William defeated Harold’s army on 14 October. William the Conqueror thus claimed the English throne, the first foreign-born sovereign to do so.
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CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Rehabilitation Medicine
Bates, David. William the Conqueror. London, UK: Hamlyn Books, 1989, pp. 49-59.
Howarth, David. 1066: The Year of the Conquest. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble, 1977.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: What we think of today as the classic naval ship-to-ship battle was not even possible in 1066. Naval gunnery was yet in the future, and the poor sea-keeping qualities of merchant ships recruited for a navy made maneuvering difficult.
Novel military technology has been a factor in many victories. Historians credit William’s victory at Hastings in part to his use of horse-mounted cavalry, a deployment that had not been seen in England prior to Hastings. William’s cavalry fought with spears that were thrown overhand or used as stabbing weapons. In a short several decades the spear would be converted to a lance held firmly under the arm, and the jousting knight of legend was born.
Tradition holds that when William landed at Pevensey he stumbled in disembarking Mora and fell forward onto his outstretched arms. Aghast as this horrible omen, his subordinates were calmed by William’s exclamation, “By God’s splendor, I have seized the soil of England in both my hands!” William held the throne until his death in 1087, thought to be the result of injuries sustained in a horseback riding accident.
