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Finally, the Channel was also a field of power and conflict, where various peoples

sought to subject the offshore islanders to their will. In our period, it was Romans,
Angles, Saxons, viking and Normans (in later centuries it would be Spanish, Dutch,
French and Germans). As well as invaders, there were also missionaries (Christians
from Ireland and Rome), raiders out for plunder (vikings), and settlers looking for land
and a new homeland (Angles, Saxons and the later vikings).

In short, there was geopolitics. The Narrow Channel was its epicentre, but the North
and Irish seas also acted as sea-ways of geopolitical power and influence.

The sorrowful king
After the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Narrow Channel grew in importance. It
became the internal line of communication within William the Conqueror’s new
Anglo-Norman state (a good example of how “history changes what geography
means”). The Channel was the crucial link between its two halves, the kingdom of
England and the duchy of Normandy. The royal family, churchmen, the nobility, top

officials and advisers were now required to become very frequent cross-Channel
travellers. But on one such crossing, in late November 1120, disaster struck.

The White Ship was leaving the Norman port of Barfleur bound for Southampton
when it struck rocks. It immediately capsized and sank. Around 300 drowned; there
was only one survivor. The dead included members of the royal family and the king’s
retinue. The king himself, Henry I, William the Conqueror’s fourth son, had luckily
taken another ship.

But the king lost his heir, William, along with two illegitimate children. His royal
justice, and many leading members of the English and Norman nobility and church
also drowned. The chronicles recorded that “The sorrowful king mourned for his sons,
the flower of his nobility, his principal barons.” “No ship that ever sailed brought
England such disaster, none was so well known the wide world over.” Charles
Spencer, author of a book on the sinking, calls it "the most disastrous moment in

British maritime history" (The White Ship: Anarchy and the Wrecking of Henry I’s
Dream, 2020).