Prior to the Norman Conquest, King Edward the Confessor had contracted the five most important Channel ports of that day to provide ships and men for the service of the monarch and although this was frequently as a crossChannel ferry service, it was not exclusively so. Under the Norman kings, this became the essential means of keeping the two halves of their realm together, but after the loss of Normandy in 1205, their ships the forrunners of the Royal Navy suddenly became England’s first line of defence against the French.

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