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Norman crossbowman | Anglo Saxon History 
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| Battle of Hastings 1066AD -
Summary of the Battle of Hastings |
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| My current thoughts and summary of the events |
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| | The Ship List of William ▲ |
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The Ship List gives us the starting point: 777 vessels assembled at Dives, contributed by fourteen named lords from harbours along the Norman coast and its rivers. The Carmen's figure of around 6,000 fighting men implies that roughly a sixth of those ships carried troops, leaving the majority for horses and supplies — enough, on the arithmetic, for a cavalry force of around 3,000 knights.
What the list cannot tell us is how those ships performed on the crossing, how many survived the storm between Dives and St Valérie, or what route they took across the Channel. Those questions are addressed on Pages B, D and E.
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Ships - Drekka, Snekkja and Knarr ▲
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| | Why land at Hastings ▲ |
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The evidence across four separate civilisations points consistently to the same conclusion: the Hastings area was valuable not primarily as a port, nor as a military stronghold, but as a shipbuilding centre. The combination of high quality Wealden oak close to the coast, abundant iron for nails and fittings, and navigable tidal inlets made this stretch of coast between Eastbourne and New Romney uniquely suited to constructing and maintaining ships.
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The Romans built their forts here to protect it. The Saxons settled it and held it independently for over three centuries. The Vikings wintered at Appledore specifically to exploit it. The Normans landed here and immediately secured both Pevensey and the Hastings burh.
William's decision to land at Hastings rather than on the open farmland of Kent — where his cavalry would have had far more room to operate — only makes sense in this context. He was not simply seeking a fight with Harold. He was seizing the most strategically valuable asset on the English south coast.
This matters more than it might first appear. As established on Page Battle of Hastings 1066AD - D - Sailing - Dives sur Mer to St Valerie, William had already lost approximately 83 ships — predominantly supply and transport vessels — in the storm before he even left Normandy. He crossed the Channel with a depleted and battle-damaged fleet. Securing a working shipyard was not an optional prize. It was a strategic necessity. Without the ability to repair his fleet and resupply by sea, William's position in England would have been precarious regardless of what happened on the battlefield.
Seizing the Hastings shipyards also sent Harold an unmistakable message. Harold knew better than anyone what those yards were worth — his own naval power depended on them. Threatening to burn or permanently occupy the most productive shipbuilding area in southern England was almost certainly calculated to force Harold to respond quickly, before he was ready, rather than consolidating his forces after the exhausting march back from Stamford Bridge.
William did not stumble into the Hastings peninsula by chance or convenience. He came here because this was where England built its ships — and he needed those ships as much as he needed to win the battle.
| | Dives sur Mer to St Valerie and a Storm ▲ |
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If the Williams Ship List showing 777 ships and Master Wace's 694 ships leaving St Valerie are true then the fleet would have lost 83 ships between Dives and St Valerie.
This would have been over 10% of the fleet, which would make the report from William of Poitiers of concealment of the drowned fairly important, as there would have been a significant number possibly in the hundreds of troops, horses and a great deal of supplies.
William secretly buried the drowned, and simultaneously faced an urgent shortage of supplies that required daily replenishment from the surrounding area.
The most logical explanation linking these two facts is that the ships lost in the storm were predominantly the slower, non-oared transport and supply vessels. These would have been the last to leave Dives, the least able to fight the storm, and the most likely to be wrecked on the Alabaster Coast cliffs as the wind shifted from West to North West. The faster troop-carrying warships, with oarsmen able to work against the weather, would have made St Valerie.
This means William arrived at St Valerie with most of his army largely intact — but critically short of food, fodder for the horses, and equipment. The secret burials were not simply about morale. A public count of 83 lost ships would have immediately revealed the scale of the supply crisis to every soldier waiting on the beach. Panic and mass desertion would have followed.
The urgent sourcing of replacement supplies from towns near St Valerie, and the weeks of further delay at St Valerie waiting for a favourable wind, now take on a different meaning: William may not simply have been waiting for the wind. He may also have been waiting until he had enough food to sustain an invasion.
| | St Valerie to Pevensey ▲ |
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The Carmen provides the only detailed account of the crossing itself, and working through its timeline gives us a total sailing time of roughly 22 hours — approximately 8 hours from St Valerie to an overnight anchorage, then 5 hours onward to the English coast the following morning.
Applying the constraint of the Viking anchor chain length (approximately 11 metres) against the known shoal depths in the Channel, and adjusting for the higher tide levels of Norman times, eliminates all but two candidate anchorage points — the Varne and the Colbart Ridge. The Varne sits further up the Channel and would have added unnecessary distance to the crossing. This leaves the Colbart Ridge as the most probable overnight anchorage.
The New Romney incident now fits naturally into this picture. Master Wace reports that only two ships were in peril, and that these were perhaps overloaded. This is not a coincidence. As argued on the previous page (Battle of Hastings 1066AD - D - Sailing - Dives sur Mer to St Valerie), the storm that drove the fleet from Dives to St Valerie most likely destroyed around 83 ships — predominantly the slower, non-oared supply and transport vessels. The troops and horses survived largely intact, but the fleet arrived at St Valerie critically short of food, fodder and equipment.
Before William could sail for England, replacement supplies had to be sourced from the surrounding area — which explains the weeks of delay at St Valerie that chronicles attribute solely to waiting for a favourable wind. He was also waiting until he had enough provisions to sustain an invasion.
When the fleet finally sailed, some ships were dangerously overloaded precisely because the vessels that should have been carrying that cargo had already been lost in the storm. The two ships that broke away and landed at New Romney were not simply unlucky — they were probably among the most heavily laden in the fleet, struggling in the Channel conditions, and made for the nearest shore when they could no longer keep up. The hostile reception they received from the local population, and William's subsequent punitive destruction of New Romney after the battle, is consistent with vessels arriving unannounced and out of formation rather than as part of a planned landing.
The chain of events from Dives to Pevensey therefore forms a single connected story: the storm destroyed the supply ships, the surviving fleet was overloaded at St Valerie, two of those overloaded ships were lost at New Romney, and the rest anchored on the Colbart Ridge before completing the crossing to Pevensey the following morning.
| | The Coastline and Landscape ▲ |
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The landscape map on this page, when read together, tells a surprisingly coherent strategic story.
The Hastings peninsula in 1066 was almost entirely surrounded by water and marsh. To the south, the sea. To the east, the tidal inlets and salt marshes of the Romney Marsh system, which in 1066 extended much further inland than today due to sea levels approximately 4.5 metres higher than the present. To the north and west, the dense oak forest of Andredsweald — a largely impenetrable barrier that ran across the whole of the Sussex Weald and which could only be crossed on the old Roman roads and Celtic ridgeways.
This means that any English army coming to confront William had essentially one viable approach route — south along the ridge road from London through the forest, funnelling onto the high ground above Hastings. Harold could not outflank William to the east through the marsh, and could not move cavalry freely through the forest. He had to come straight down the ridge. William, who had cavalry and knew the ground from his fleet's arrival, could choose his defensive position on that ridge and wait.
Far from being a strange place to invade with cavalry, the Hastings peninsula was in many respects an ideal bridgehead. The sea and marsh protected William's flanks and his fleet. The forest constrained Harold's options. And the Roman road network, visible on the map in red, gave William's forces the only practical routes inland if he chose to advance — or gave him advance warning of Harold's approach if he chose to hold.
The landscape did not just provide the backdrop to the Battle of Hastings. It dictated the shape of the battle before a single sword was drawn.
For a more detailed discussion of why William chose Hastings specifically, please see Page Battle of Hastings 1066AD - C - Why Hastings?
| | New Romney Destroyed ▲ |
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It seems unlikely they would have landed in Romney by error as 700 ships were sailing together, it is much more likely that the vessels were taking on water and they needed to reach the nearest shore, and if the route went from the Colbart Ridge to Pevensey, then Romney would have been the nearest shore line.
"The most likely explanation is that the 83 knarr lost in the Channel storm between Dives and St Valerie forced the remaining vessels to carry extra cargo — see Page 'An analysis of Duke Williams forces' for the full logistics calculation."
| | Landscape of Haestingaport ▲ |
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This is the final rendering of the map of Hastings in about 1066AD
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 If you look at the Lidar map to the left you can see that the ridges seem to run to the South East, and the majority of the small streams running off these go either north east or south west. (clicking on the maps will show a larger map).
"This map also shows that Hastings was on a peninsula, with the Rother to the east and the Ashbourne to the west feeding into the Pevensey inlet, which in 1066AD was still an open tidal estuary extending well inland. These water boundaries meant that movement to and from Hastings by land was effectively limited to the ridge running north towards Battle and beyond — the narrowest point of which is near modern Netherfield."
 Also from the more detailed Lidar map it would seem likely that there was a promontary into the sea near to modern Cooden (originally known as Cooling). To the east there is the area around Bexhill near to Pelham park where the Pell stream reached the sea. Further east there was another promontory that protruded from the Galley Hill area near to modern Bulverhythe and out into the Channel, which would most likely have streams that reached the sea towards the north east or south west.
 If John Speed's map of 1610AD was correct then there was an island off Bulverhythe and St Leonards. This implies that the land was originally further out, and the island is also to the south east of Galley hill which would be logical if there was a promontary there. This map also shows the Aspen river running along the modern St Leonards sea front towards Hastings.
This map also implies what may have happened in the 1287AD storm (see Landscape - The 1287AD Storm and its effect on the Kent and Sussex Coast).
Here is the basis for the final map
If the land was originally a promontory, and there were streams running south west and north east, its possible that the 1287AD storm broke through a weakened area behind the 1610AD island and deposited vast amounts of shingle into the estuary of the Asten river blocking Combe Haven and across the Haestingaport harbour where the current Shopping Centre at Priory Meadow was.
This would have forced the Town to relocate to the position of the Old Town of Hastings where the net shops and fishing fleet currently are.
The 1610AD Island appears to have eroded away by the mid 1700's, so the promontory could have been even further out than my map shows.
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Local Interest
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