Sinking of the White Ship

November 25, 1119

Off Barfleur, a crew drunk on wine rowed the White Ship onto a rock in the moonlight. Henry I's only legitimate son William Adelin drowned along with a hundred and forty young nobles. Chroniclers said the king never smiled again. The succession crisis would produce the Anarchy, two decades of civil war between Stephen and Matilda that devastated England and left castles and fields in ruin.