Hello and welcome to the History Extra Podcast from BBC History magazine,

Britain's best-selling history magazine. I'm I'm I Lee Korthorn.

900 years ago this month, one of the most significant maritime tragedies in English history took place.

The white ship, containing the cream of Anglo-Norman society,

went down off the coast of France,

leaving Henry I without a male air

and throwing the future of the realm into chaos.

The story of the white ship has been re-told by the best-selling author and historian Charles Spencer,

in a new book, and in today's episode he explores these dramatic events with

fellow historian Dan Jones. It's my enormous pleasure and indeed a great

privilege to be here with Charles Spencer.

A superb historian, the author of I think six books, now seven, including the history of the Spencer family, his family, all thought the house in which we're sitting at the moment, books about the Battle of Blenham, killers of of the King and the Catcher King, fantastic cinematic stories about the

revolution of the

17th century in England, but now the author of a book that's very close to my heart and indeed my interests

because it concerns the Middle Ages and it concerns one of the most dramatic and scenic and cinematic events in the

Middle Ages that's the sinking of the white ship in 112.

900 years ago it's been described as the medieval titanic. But you make an

argument in the book, Charles, that it's even more meaningful in the course of history than the

titanic itself. So I wonder if we can begin,

Charles, by you telling us in November 1120, what happened? What was the White

ship and sum up the story for us?

Well, yes, in the same week actually that 500 years later, the passengers of the Mayflower were getting off.

...