settle various affairs there, visited Tours to obtain from the archbishop the scrip and staff of pilgrimage, and rejoined the French king at Vézelay in June.[1] Thence the allied monarchs, with their armies, marched together as far as Lyon, where they separated, Philip proceeding to Genoa and Richard to Marseilles, the intention being that the two armadas should make rendezvous at Messina, previous to sailing in consort for Palestine.
The Dartmouth fleet comprised ships as well from Normandy, Poitou, Brittany and Aquitaine as from England. Part, if not the whole of it, sailed in April, 1190, having on board, in addition to men, stores, engines and other provisions for the army. But many of the vessels were ill suited for Atlantic weather, and when, on the 3rd of May, in the Bay of Biscay, it blew a south-westerly gale, the fleet was dispersed, and four ships would seem to have been lost, if Peter of Langtoft be correct in saying that 110 ships sailed, and if other historians rightly state the number of vessels that later assembled at the mouth of the Tagus at 106 only.
One ship belonging to London, and carrying a hundred passengers, is declared to have been favoured with a miracle. When, at the height of the storm, the terrified crew invoked divine aid St. Thomas of Canterbury thrice appeared to them and assured them that he and the martyrs, St. Edmund and St. Nicholas,[2] had been appointed protectors of the ship, and would conduct her in safety, if only the people would repent of their sins and do penance. The terms being accepted the tempest instantly ceased, and the ship proceeded on her voyage until she reached Silves, on the south coast of Portugal. Silves had been taken from the Moors a few years earlier, by the help of William de Mandeville, but they were endeavouring to regain possession of it. Eighty soldiers from the vessel were landed as a reinforcement for the besieged; but the town's people, not content with this aid, seized the ship herself, and broke her up, in order to utilise her timbers for the defence, promising, however, that the King of Portugal would provide compensation.[3]
Of the other ships two detachments, one of nine and the other of sixty-three sail, got into Lisbon. There their crews committed great outrages, until the King of Portugal closed the gates of the city against them and imprisoned the seven hundred offenders who
