Could a Norman Horse Leap from a Longboat?
Hastings Borough council have declared that this is the Year of the Normans (1,000 years since the birth of William the Conqueror) for which there will be events across Hastings and the rest of the country and in France from this summer and into 2027. To kick off, PETER GRAY considers the role of horses back then and in more recent invasions.
One of the most surprising things about Operation Sea Lion, the German plan to invade Britain in the summer of 1940 was the number of horses involved. The first wave would see 360 horses put ashore, the second wave would include over 4,000 horses. It turns out that the supply lines for the mechanised Blitzkrieg attack system, which had got the German army so speedily across the Low Countries and France, were all operated by horse-drawn vehicles.
Another close call was the Spanish Armada, at the time (1558) the biggest invasion force ever gathered. There were just 300 horses in the first wave but had the initial invasion been successful, many more horses would have come across with the Army of Flanders.
It wasn’t to be. The smaller English ships were able to outmanoeuvre the Armada and eventually forced it to escape by going the long way round back to Spain (via Scotland). In the process, horrifically, the horses were put over the side because there was not enough fresh water for the extended journey. Some even say the Shetland Pony is descended from those that swam ashore from the flagship, the Gran Grifton, which foundered off the coast of Fair Isle.
Napoleon came close at the turn of the 18th century with up to a staggering 15,000 horses available. A dangerous time for Britain with few European allies and as yet no Martello Towers. By the time Napoleon met his Waterloo in 1815 the threat was over and Britain had European allies again and lots of those towers.
So much for the failures. All the successful conquests of Britain actually succeeded in shipping horses across the channel.
William the Bastard brought a couple of thousands of them over in late September 1066. Julius Caesar also brought a similar number of horses across the channel, on the second attempt. Not surprisingly the Romans were the best organised; their large Trireme ships with three decks of Oarsmen, supplementary sails and specially adapted hulls for beach landings, gave them speed, up to 8 knots (9.2 mph) and a large carrying capacity.
How the Normans got horses across the channel is a little harder to fathom. There are only a few independent historical sources about the invasion and one of them is embroidery (the Bayeux tapestry) which, it seems, has the most to say on the subject. The embroidery images of ships are all the longboat type. Their low freeboard (sides) meant they were fast but not great for heavy loads, and there needed to be a way of getting the horses off the boats.
In one scene in the tapestry, a horse is shown jumping out of a boat. In 1967, a replica longboat was used to establish if this was possible. It was not; although they did succeed in getting a single horse to jump out when the longboat was pulled over on its side. This would not work for multiple horses on a boat.
In 1985 Bernard S Bachrach published a very detailed analysis On the Origins of William the Conqueror’s Horse Transports trying to explain how the Normans got the horses across the channel in a fit state for battle and in sufficient numbers. He considers that the longboats depicted are unlikely to be accurate, and the horse jumping out is more likely artistic licence.
He concluded the most credible scenario is the use of Byzantine ships designed to carry 10 or 20 horses with their riders and equipment. After all, it was these ships that had landed Norman invaders on Sicily with their horses in 1038. It is interesting to note that another historical character in Sicily fighting with the Normans was no less than Harald Hadryd, who would later play a part in the Norman conquest by engaging King Harold in the Stamford Bridge battle.
So back on the River Dives, as boats were being built for the invasion, no doubt they were influenced by that Sicilian campaign. One feature of Byzantine horse-carrying boats was that they were designed to match the organisation of their cavalry. They used a decimal system, which matches another scene of the embroidery where ten horses can be seen with their riders in one ship.
The Normans were a pan-European force well versed in invading and conquering. Although there is every chance that Harold may not have been defeated had he waited to recover from the battle at Stamford Bridge and not rush down to meet William, possibly by boat. It seems likely the Normans would prevail and conquer eventually. It took decades and many battles for the Norman conquest of Southern Italy to be completed.
Those horses should have been decisive in battle against a static Anglo-Saxon human wall, but they couldn’t be shifted. The defensive position on Senlac Hill, or whatever hill it was, was a tactical advantage until the almost comical bluff by the Normans of running away then circling back. This almost worked. Towards the end of the battle, they finally broke through with the horses, by which time Harold was almost certainly dead, either from an arrow in his right eye or from being hacked to death by four Norman knights.
Within a year, the conquest was complete, and William got to change his last name to Conqueror. His brother-in-law commissioned the Bayeux Tapestry, the social media of the day, and they went with the arrow-in-the-eye storyline.
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